Heart to Heart
by wave obscura
Summary: *NOW COMPLETE* After the electrocution, Dean suffers some very painful permanent damage. Crappy circumstances leave the boys broke and desperate; Sam does what he’s gotta do to take care of his brother. Sick!Hurt!Dean, multi-chap AU based on "Faith"
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** For the sick pleasure of myself and others. No copyright infringement intended.

**_Note:_** First fic! I've been sitting on this for months, too intimidated by everyone else's wonderful fics to post it. I'm tired of being a lurker and I'm DYING to actually participate in the fandom so pleeeeeease be gentle with me. If you like this one, I have a pile of stories I'd just love to post.

Heart to Heart

by wave obscura

**CHAPTER ONE: ****Gas-n-Go**

They run out of gas just outside of La Grande, Oregon. Sam beats the Impala's steering wheel, for Dean's sake refrains from screaming_ you gas-guzzling piece of shit _but allows himself to think it because he can't quite wrap his head around their un-fucking-believably bad luck. The Impala hates him, he's known practically since birth but _goddamn it, car, this hurts Dean way more than it hurts me. _

Sam's settling in for a good cry, a good old-fashioned Why Me? sob-fest when Dean moans, a little itty-bitty baby moan that sounds more like a sigh, a pitiful noise Dean wouldn't allow past his lips unless he was in serious, _serious_ fucking pain and that's what gets Sam moving into the freezing night.

La Grande is brown and ugly, not like what you'd think Oregon would look like. Not a tree line in sight, just dully sloping yellow-orange hills, barren except for patches of squat, strangled-looking bushes—a place that exports tumbleweeds, nothing "grande" about it.

Not that Sam has any business thinking about scenery. Not with the shit he's about to pull.

Sam opens the passenger door and leans in to where Dean is squirming and panting in the front seat, pulls the blanket up around his shoulders and—it's like he can't stop himself— plants a gentle, lipless kiss on the bridge of Dean's nose.

"Sam. Shit. _Sam. Fuck._" Dean mutters over and over again. He's not conscious, Sam _knows _he's not really conscious but there's a panicked edge to Dean's voice that scares him shitless…

"I'll be back in twenty minutes, dude." Sam closes his eyes and presses his forehead against Dean's. "Twenty minutes."

"Sam, _fuck_…"

"We're outta gas, Dean. We're outta gas, okay? I'll be back in twenty minutes."

And then Sam goes into battle mode, barely remembers marching a couple of miles back to the gas station.

There's a waif of a girl hunched elbow-to-knee in a folding chair at the far end of the parking lot, smoking like her cigarette is boring her to death, and he can't fully make her out from a distance but he can see she's wearing sparkling purple knee-high combat boots, that her eyes are practically painted shut and veiled by stringy black hair. A teenager.

A fucking teenager.

Sam slows his gait, hoping maybe he'll have some second thoughts.

He doesn't. He knows what he's about to do is stupid and wrong but even his conscience, the little do-gooder angel on his shoulder, is whispering in his ear about Dean's pain. It needs to stop.

He has to make it stop.

He pauses at the farthest pump to assess the teenage girl. She stares back at him with acute disinterest, drags on her cigarette, snorts like a goddamn jet engine and hocks an enormous loogie in his direction.

_Screw it_, Sam thinks. The girl'll just be a little traumatized. She'll have a nightmare or two and Dean won't be in agony. Fair trade.

"Hiya, sweetheart," he calls to her in a thick Texan accent when he's close enough to see the dull of her eyes. He drags one leg behind him in an exaggerated limp.

"Hey," she grunts. "Run outta gas?"

"Yep, just a coupla miles up the road," he points in the opposite direction of where the car is, grinning his most winning grin. "Knew I shoulda stopped."

She nods vaguely, flicks her cigarette away and pulls herself from the chair.

The grin falls right off Sam's face. Her belly isn't huge, but it's big enough.

"You're—you're pregnant."

The girl looks at Sam like he's a creep and pulls the jacket around herself. "Oh, Jesus _fucking _Christ. I'm trying to quit, okay? Mind your own _fucking _business."

"I—uh—" Sam stutters, forgetting the stupid accent. Jesus, he's just committed himself to a lower circle of hell.

She shoves past him to the ancient gas pump, throwing him a bony shoulder. "You want regular or premium, asshole?"

"Um… premium? Uh—listen, Miss…?"

She doesn't offer her name.

"Listen," he repeats. His instinct is to take off, run back to the car as fast as he can go, but… his money clip rests empty in his pocket. And Dean…

"Listen, I'm sorry but I—I have to rob you… my—my brother, he's sick and we need a mote—"

"You got money for gas or not?"

"No. _Fuck_. No. Look," Sam pulls the gun from the back of his pants.

The girl drops the gas can on the pavement and Sam throws up his hands to placate.

"Calm down. I'm not—I'm not even going to point it at you, okay? I don't wanna shoot you. But you gotta give me all the money in the register. And a rack of beer."

The girl's face collapses into an odd expression of disappointment and she rolls her eyes as if Sam is an old friend and the robbery is not only some sort of personal insult, but also _super _annoying.

"Goddamn it," she says, "Look at me. You think my life don't suck enough? _Goddamn it!_" She tangles her fists in her stringy hair. Her coat falls open and Sam can see that she's much farther along than he first thought.

"No, I'm sure your life sucks a lot— I mean, _shit. _This isn't, I'm not trying to…"

Shit.

"I'm sorry—I'm _really _sorry. I don't wanna—my brother is…" Sam pauses for a deep breath. He can't stand around and fucking babble all night. If he gives the girl a chance to start crying, he won't be able to go through with it. "I'm not gonna hurt you, alright? But I need that money. Now_." _

The girl fills his gas can and hands him a wad of bills. She's an orchestra of hems and haws and long suffering sighs, but she doesn't cry, just mutters about being a single mom who don't even have no high school diploma and how unfair it is that her mom makes her have a job and pay rent and help feed everyone in the whole family including her piece-of-shit brother even though she's almost 7 months pregnant and it hurts her back to be on her feet all day.

"It all must be so hard for you," Sam says absently as he secures her to the folding metal chair with a couple of bungee cords.

"It _is_,"she says venomously. "But it don't matter. You'll get yours."

Been getting it my whole life, Sam thinks.

He resists the urge to pat her belly as he gathers up the beer and gas can. Instead he silently mouths _M'sorry, kid _and turns his back on both of them.

He's on the edge of the road when he hears the girl call: "Probably lose my job for this, ya prick!"

Yeah, a whole new circle of hell. For $55 bucks and some change.

OOOOO

As Sam barrels down the shoulder of the highway, he tries to reassures himself over and over that he tied the girl up properly, that he's given himself enough time to get the hell away.

That there's no way she'll get free.

That she'll probably be too busy going into premature labor.

Shit.

This is a story he'll conveniently forget to tell Dean.

Without a free hand for balance he's slipping and sliding in the gravel ditch, tumbling forward, sliding farther and farther down the embankment until he can barely see the road. A car passes and he pitches forward in a panic, rips the knees out of his jeans and scrapes his palms all to shit.

"Dean," he calls when he finally reaches the car, scaling the ditch in giant strides, "Dean."

Sam throws open the door and chucks the beer in the backseat. Dean is a frail shadow against the passenger side window, eyes open but all they can see is the pain. He lifts a trembling arm, reaches his hand out toward the windshield, out at the nothing, searching the cool glass, the slick roof, the vinyl lining of the passenger door, searching for an escape from the pain and finding nothing. Sam takes his hand but Dean moans and tugs it away.

The hand braces against the window as Sam screeches out of the ditch, back onto the road, and Sam should be watching out the windshield but he watches his brother's little pale hand instead, shaking so badly the friction against the moisture on the window goes _squeak squeak _in rhythm with Dean's labored breathing.

"We're moving, bro. We're moving again. In a few we're gonna find you a place to lie down, okay? Okay, Dean?"

"Sam. _Fuck._ You gotta… _fuck_."

Tears sting at Sam's eyes. He reaches for his brother's knee, pats it softly, leaves it there. Dean's hand finds his, and it's _cold,_ like the hand of a corpse, like Jessica's hand in the old nightmares, rising up out of the fresh dirt—

"Oh, god. Sam. You. _Please_."

"Just a few more miles, bro. We just gotta get farther away. Just a little farther away." Sam floors it, hopes to goddamn Christ that there's enough gas to get where they're going.

OOOOO

Seventy-five miles later Sam is pulling into some two stop-light shitheap called Hermiston. Every freedom-loving cell in his body is telling him to keep driving, but Sam can't handle the noises Dean is making, growling like an injured animal, still squirming against the window trying to escape the pain. He hands sixty dollars—their _last _sixty dollars—to the man who runs the Oregon Trail Motor Inn.

He parks the car sideways to get as close to the motel door as possible but it's not close enough. He tries to be gentle, tries so _goddamn hard _to be gentle but Dean is screaming anyway, and then Sam is getting nervous and motel patrons come out onto their front stoops and ask _what the hell are you doing to that poor guy, _and between explaining again and again _my brother is sick _and _mind your own goddamn business _and _come on, Dean, I'm sorry Dean, almost over Dean, not trying to hurt you, Dean, _he gets frustrated and ends up being rough, dragging poor Dean into the motel room in jerky, ungentle motions until Dean passes out.

By the time they fall on the bed, panting, Sam's not sure he can get back up.

Tears slide down his cheeks as he listens to Dean endlessly deliriously describing his pain: _fuck, Sam, it fuckin'… oh, shit, Sammy, Sam? Sam, shit. Fuck. _

"I know, Dean," Sam whispers futilely. "I know. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."

He rolls Dean on his side and holds him, pets his hair, whispers soft apologies in his ear because it's all he can fucking do, because beer-as-pain-killer was a _stupid_ fucking idea, because it's too late to get Dean anything more potent, because tomorrow night he can burgle a pharmacy but right now all Sam has to offer is a bed and his own body heat.

"Make it stop, Sammy," Dean whispers, and Sam doesn't answer because he refuses to believe that Dean's actually awake, that something so pitiful would come out of Dean's mouth. He's unconscious, Sam insists to himself. Fucking unconscious and he won't remember a thing in the morning.

"I have to rub your back, Dean," Sam says loud and clear so the groping won't be a surprise. Without waiting for Dean to protest Sam digs his fingers into the knots of muscle along Dean's spine.

Again Dean screams. Tears stand in Sam's eyes but he knows it has to be done because if the muscles don't loosen up at least a little bit the pain's going to be ten million times worse in the morning. Sam feels them pulsing beneath his hands, Dean's whole body rhythmically contracting as if he's still being shocked.

Dean's too weak to fight. Instead he cries, begs, _whimpers _for Sam to stop.

But Sam doesn't stop— not until Dean's passed out again from the pain, not until his own hands are mangled, half-paralyzed claws, not until he can't feel his fingers any more and he falls face-first into his pillow and closes his eyes for the first time in days, fingering his empty money clip and allowing the despair to wash over him, waves lulling him to sleep.

They are fucked. Irrevocably and inarguably _fucked_.

The next time Sam opens his eyes, the sun is stabbing through the pissed-stained curtains and it's already fucking check out time.

To be continued.

_Thanks for reading, ya'll. Please review! _


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes: 1. **Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed and alerted and favorited. It's major motivation. **2. **Milwaukie, Oregon is a real place, and it's spelled correctly. **3. **Does anyone know anything about livejournal? I really want to do the whole fanfic thing over there, but as far as keeping a blog organized and participating on community blogs? I don't get it. Gimme a little help and I'll be forever in your debt!

**Warnings: **Elusive plot. I'm getting there, I'm getting there!

Anyway…

**Chapter Two – Elm Street Pharmacy**

"Hurry up, sir," Sam says to the pharmacist. They've already done the whole _please please don't kill me _and the _I don't want to hurt _you thing and Sam's back is killing him from lugging Dean around all fucking night and he just wants the guy to hurry up and load the motel pillowcase with pills so they can get the hell out this shit-ass town.

Sam has learned something about himself: unlike the girl at the gas station, the pharmacist has been crying since minute one, and Sam feels nothing but growing impatience.

"My girls," the pharmacist keeps moaning between his hitching sniffles, "My girls, they're so beautiful and Trish wants to go to Berkeley and they have such a bright future both of them and they're such sweet sweet girls and I could show you a picture if you wanted and you'd never want to hurt two such beautiful girls because they'd be just devastated if something happened to me they'd be just absolutely—"

"Sir—" Sam rests his forearm against his hipbone because the gun is getting heavy.

"—nice-looking boy like you could really get somewhere in life if he set his mind to it, my daughters would throw fits for a nice-looking boy like you. My Trish, she—"

Sam raises the gun. "_Sir_. Sir, seriously. I need you to hurry up."

"Pills are bad news, you know," the tech says, "My sister had a C-section and—"

"I'm not a drug addict," Sam tells the man indignantly. "They're for my— just hurry up."

The man wipes his nose on his sleeve and smirks. "An enabler, huh? My brother-in-law used to make all kinds of excuses. If you cared about whoever you're stealing these pills for, you'd—"

"Shut up," Sam silences the man by cocking the gun and jamming it against his temple. "You don't know what you're talking about. If those _fucking _doctors, if they had just… just put in the pills in the bag. Don't—don't make me shoot you in the face."

The man's mouth snaps shut. He bows his head and sobs—wails, really. A fat gloop of snot oozes from his nose and falls to the floor between them.

"Come on, I didn't—I didn't mean that. I didn't mean… sir, you're getting snot all over… let me find you a…" Stowing the gun in the back of his pants, Sam begins to rummage his person for a napkin or a tissue. He finds the Impala's keys, his woefully thin money clip, a Zippo, the remains of a toothpick, a couple of tiny tubs of that apple butter shit Dean likes so much on his toast –

Sam turns around just in time to see the tech charging at him, one arm stretched high above his head, his face frozen in a tableau of carnal anger, red eyes sparkling with desperation. An anguished battle cry explodes from his mouth, pitched so high it's almost comical.

"I WON'T LET YOU HURT MY FAMILY!" bellows the man, and before Sam can figure out what the hell's going on he feels a sting in his pectoral muscle, right above his heart.

The pain spreads quickly, across his chest, down his arm, over the tense muscles of his shoulders. Years of experience tells Sam that he's been stabbed.

Twice.

With a nail file.

The man plunges again; Sam catches him by the wrist and twists until the nail file clatters to the floor. The man panics, flails, a rogue fist catching Sam hard in the nose. With a swish of a long leg, Sam knocks the man's feet out from under him. Using the hostage arm to spin him just a bit, Sam drops the man on his stomach and pins both arms above his head.

The pharmacist yowls in defeat.

"J—Jesus," Sam sputters, winded. "That was… wow. I'm bleeding, even." He lifts the tech off the floor, slams him up against the wall and leans against his back, panting heavily into the pharmacist's ear, until he catches his breath. "Fuck, man, I told you I wasn't gonna hurt you."

"You said you were gonna shoot me in the head!" The man whimpers. "My girls!"

"Yeah, yeah. Guess I've learned a lesson about idle threats, huh?" Sam chuckles; the pharmacist huffs in disapproval. "Listen, I'm gonna release one of your arms, and you're gonna grab some bandages and put them in the bag for me, alright? Then I'll get out of your hair. Promise."

Sam is gentle when he handcuffs the guy to the u-bend of the toilet in the women's bathroom. But he doesn't feel an apology is necessary.

**OOOO**

"You're bleeding." Dean's rough voice breaks through the darkness when Sam opens the motel door. "Why are you bleeding?"

Sam damns the early sunlight for exposing him. "It's nothing. Listen, we gotta get outta here." He snaps the light on and catches his brother mid-wince in bed, trying to sit himself up.

Dean sags againsts his pillows, pretending that's all the farther he'd wanted to go. "Come here. Let me look at you."

"It's fine, Dean, really. It's not even bleeding anymore. How you feeling?"

"Sam. Let me look at you."

Sam sits on the bed and waits patiently while Dean inspects his wound with trembling hands.

The exam seems to tire Dean out. After a moment he slumps back against the headboard.

"Make sure you dump some peroxide in it," he says.

_Thanks for the newsflash, jackass, _Sam might have said, if Dean weren't… if Dean were well.

"We gotta go. Now. We gotta get out of this town. Can we move you?"

Dean picks at cigarette burn on the bedspread, makes a production out of clearing his throat. "Where we going?"

"Told you. Vengeful spirit in Milwaukie."

"Wisconsin?"

"Oregon."

Dean nods, avoiding Sam's eyes. "Gimme a minute and we'll go."

Sam doesn't bother to ask permission. He runs a hand along his brother's arm and back muscles, feels them trembling and contracting, twisting themselves in knots. "Okay, okay. We can wait. I got you some muscle relaxers and some stuff for pain. We can wait. It's fine. We can wait."

**OOOO**

The drugs hit Dean hard—as soon as they step out of the motel and into the sun, his eyelids droop, his legs tangle beneath him.

Sam catches Dean around the armpits before he falls, curses and pants through the pain that stabs through his shoulder. "Come on, buddy, we gotta go. We gotta get the fuck outta here."

"Feel good," Dean mumbles, and promptly passes out.

The sun is warm on Sam's face but his breath erupts from his mouth in freezing puffs. Hermiston is even uglier during the day, like looking through a sepia lens at scenery already covered in dust. It's only seven in the morning and citizens of Hermiston are milling in front of the convenience store, an intimidating number of teenagers and middle-schoolers with headphones and backpacks and new shoes.

Must be a school bus stop, Sam thinks. Of course they all stop to gape at the super-tall dude dragging a high-as-a-kite man who might be his boyfriend—or perhaps his most recent rape victim—out of a motel in broad daylight.

Two teenage boys are leaning on a lamppost at the end of the street, one in a dingy baseball cap and the other drowning in giant-sized Blazers jersey. They chuckle and leer when Dean suddenly folds in half and Sam has to hoist him into the car by the waist.

An alarm goes off in Sam's head; he keeps the boys in the corner of his eye as he fiddles with Dean's seatbelt.

The kid in the baseball cap nudges the kid in the Blazers jersey, who declares that baseball cap kid's a motherfucker but starts limping toward Sam with a faux-confident swagger.

Great.

"You boyfriend alright, there?" the kid says.

"We're fine," Sam says. His eyes flicker to the other boy behind the lamppost. "How's yours?"

The boy jerks his chin at Sam. "Better watch your back."

_Ha. _Sam smirks. He shuts Dean in the car and opens the back door to free a blanket from their tangles of laundry. Goddamn Oregon desert is cold.

"Cause I know you robbed my sister last night, _Sam Winchester_."

Sam's chest explodes with adrenaline at the sound of his real name. Any normal person might have jumped, or stopped dead, or allowed their jaw to drop to the street. But Sam, expertly trained by his father to be a liar, a con and a sociopath, doesn't let a single body part betray him, doesn't even let his eyes widened with shock. He keeps tugging at the blankets like he didn't hear the boy at all.

What he _wants _to do is drop to his knees and implore God for one, just _one _viable reason why _any_ of this shit should be happening to him and Dean. At this moment in time. After everything else.

If God truly hates them—and it's looking now like he really and truly does—Sam figures he might as well give The Man a good reason. He decides _fuck it, _I'll just shoot the kid and drive away. _Let's do it. _He slams the passenger door, reaches for the pistol in the waistband of his jeans….

And comes to his senses.

"How do you know my name?" He says, closing his eyes against a rapidly forming headache.

The boy shrugs. "I know things."

"Look," he pauses for a moment to allow his eyes to mist over. "Tell, um…your sister…?"

"Jen."

"Tell Jen I'm soooo sorry I did that to her. But my brother … my brother is really fucking sick, man. _Really _sick. We needed somewhere warm for the night."

The boy steps closer, puffs out his chest. Swollen up to his full height, he barely reaches Sam's shoulders.

"Nobody fucks with my sister. I want that money back."

"Money's gone. Can't even feed my brother breakfast." The pathetic truth of the statement almost makes Sam's eyes misty for real.

"I want it back."

"Come on, kid," Sam says, dropping the dewy-eyed act. "I'm a foot taller than you. And I'm a robber, remember? I have a gun."

"_You? You_ gonna hurt _me?_" The boy snorts at the ridiculousness of it all but can't quite hide the fear in his eyes. "You're gonna give me that money."

Sam sighs. Wrestling the keys from his jacket pocket, he opens the trunk. "Come here," he beckons to the kid, "I wanna show you something."

The kid raises his eyebrows, casts a glance back at his little friend cowering behind the lamppost. Sam can tell he kinda wants to run away, but his manhood's at stake here, so he steps up to the trunk and peers inside.

With flourish Sam lifts the Impala's false bottom and waves his hand _Price Is Right_-style at the piles and piles of pistols and shotguns and steaks and zombie nails (as Dean is fond of calling them). He watches the kid's eyes graze over the crucifixes and salt shells and crossbows, watches him pale and take a step back.

The kid's Adam's apple bobs up and down, and he looks up at Sam with pleading eyes.

"Pick a different battle, kid," Sam says gently. "You're not winning this one."

The kid raises his eyebrow and that's when Sam gets a bright idea. An evil one, and one that makes him feel like shit but it's necessary. He leans into the trunk and puts his hand on the barrel of Dean's favorite sawed-off, which isn't even loaded, not even with rock salt.

"Now _you _are going to give _me_ everything in your wallet," Sam says, stroking the weapon with his fingertips, "And I'll let you walk away with your skull intact."

Sam watches every ounce of the kid's maturity drain away, from the narrowed eyes to the cocky smirk. Suddenly he looks like a goddamn grade-schooler.

Shit.

After he empties his wallet into Sam's palm, the kid walks away slowly, his swagger a little less swaggery. When he's at a safe distance, he spins on his heals and calls out "I'm not afraid of your fuckin' toy guns! I'll be seeing _you_!" Then he and his friend disappear around the corner.

Sam sits in car unmoving for a good twenty minutes after he's swaddled Dean in a couple of blankets. He rubs the four twenty-dollar bills between his fingers, pleased that it's something and freaked that it's nowhere near enough.

Dean sounds like he's having trouble breathing—he should really be on oxygen for at least part of the day— but Sam chooses to ignore it because right now it's just too goddamned much.

He starts driving. Five minutes later he looks over at his brother, who looks about five years old, gaunt and pale in his nest of blankets, and, just like that, his resolve is completely fucking gone. He pulls down a long side road, stops the car in a shallow ditch, combs through all the plans in his head and they all the sudden look and feel ridiculous. What the fuck is he thinking, anyway? Dean's sick, really fucking sick, and Sam's grand planned is what? A ghost hunt in Milwaukie?

He's shaken by his encounter with the snot-nosed little bastard. Really and truly fucking shaken, and he sits there trembling, staring blearily at the foggy windshield until he figures out what's bothering him so much.

He's scared.

He's not necessarily scared because the kid knew his real name. He's scared because he couldn't pull it together long enough to find out _how _the kid knew his real name. He's scared because lately all he can think about is _we need gas, we need food, we need a warm bed, we need we need we need, and god what would happen to Dean if something happened to me, what if he had to go back to that place, what if they dragged him back to that place, and what the hell are you thinking, shoplifting and pickpocketing and robbing children and pregnant women? _

He should be finding Dean some sort of supernatural cure, some world-famous heart specialist, something. He should down south seeing every crackpot and hoodoo priest that might knows a thing or two about genuine healing. He should be making long term plans to get an apartment somewhere. He should be driving to Palo Alto to dig his degree out of the dumpster behind his and Jess' blackened apartment. He should be looking for a job. He should be paying more attention to Dean's medication schedule—like getting Dean the medication he was actually prescribed instead of pumping him to the gills with stolen narcotics. He should be checking him into another facility, _becaue they can't all be like that last one, _where he could have proper pain management, proper meals, _an actual bed_ to sleep in—

_Stop it_, he tells himself. He just needs to talk to Dean. Really talk to him. Dean has only been in a delirium of pain for twenty-four hours but it's felt like a week. He just needs Dean to be okay for a few minutes, just a few fucking minutes…

"Hey." Sam shakes his brother, just a little. "Dean. Hey."

Dean comes around slowly, as he often does these days, his eyes fluttering open and shut for several long minutes before he's truly conscious. His lips are bluish, or maybe Sam's just paranoid.

Finally Dean sits up with a groan. He digs his fingers into his chest, like he's unaware that Sam's watching him.

"Hey," Sam says quietly, "You awake?"

Dean grumbles under his breath.

"Dude, we need to talk."

Sam cracks a grin when Dean yawns mightily—the theatrical, overdone yawn that was his trademark before he got sick. It puts some color into his cheeks. He's pink for a moment, then grey, then an odd shade of greenish-yellow, and then—

"Oh shit, Dean. Are you gonna—"

Dean opens the car door just in time. He's too weak to really hold himself up so he just sort of falls forward, his arms in a tangle beneath him as he lays chest-down on the Impala's seat, his head hanging over the edge. As he heaves, the bones in his back writhe beneath his skin.

Sam knows his brother is too lucid to want any help. He stares out the other window while Dean retches.

After a while Dean pulls himself up, then falls over on his other side so that his head is almost resting in Sam's lap.

Sam gives Hermiston the finger and heads west.

He doesn't know what else to do.

::::

To be continued…

By the way, Dean will be more coherent in the next chapter… just in case you were worried he was going to be a quivering lump in the passenger seat the whole time.

Alright, don't make me get down on my knees and beg for reviews! Cause I will!


	3. Chapter 3

**Three things and then I'll shut up…**

**1. **Thank you sooooooo much for all your wonderful words of support. I love it, and you.

**2. **Trena81 asks a very good question: is John around somewhere? The short answer is, um, probably not. My stories tend to occur in a vacuum, so probably no demon or psychic stuff either.

**3. **When I first started writing (Harry Potter) fanfic waaay back in the day, the "review reply" feature didn't exist (as a point of interest, the hurt/comfort category didn't exist, either—suck!). So I don't know that I'm sold on the concept just yet, but I'll do my best to use it. Just know, if you don't hear from me, that I treasure each and every piece of feedback I receive. See item #1.

**Chapter Three: Unicorn Villa**

At first the team of doctors coveted Dean like a precious jewel, fawned over him like young bucks in a harem, cardiologists and pulmonologists and neurologists and geneticists and neuropharmacologists all crowded around his bed with wild medical theories, multi-colored pills, needles dripping with experimental drugs.

They transferred him from county hospital to a gleaming suite in a medical research facility, shooed the nurses away and cared for him themselves, twenty-four hours a day, controlled his pain with such precision that both brothers forgot sometimes that he was sick at all.

They did it because Dean's heart was fried, his muscles were cooked, his tissues were awash in a substance nobody could identify, but he was alive. He was a medical miracle.

A fucking "medical miracle," quote-y fingers and all.

But when they decided the healing was over, when it became clear that he probably wasn't going to die, they began to test him. They took blood faster than they could give him transfusions, scanned him with every beeping contraption and doo-dad they could find, kept volumes and volumes of Bible-sized records about his blood platelets and oxygen levels and sperm counts, bellowed their ridiculous theories at one another for hours in front of his glowing x-rays.

They blamed chemicals and spontaneous combustion and congenital seizure disorders and poisons and rare African diseases and bug bites and unlikely combinations of exotic cancers with names impossible to pronounce.

They injected him with drugs that made him giggle like a little girl, drugs that made him violently ill, drugs that collapsed his lungs, drugs that merely gave him hives and drugs that did nothing at all. They starved him, overfed him, put him on strange gluten-free diets, twisted his limbs until he screamed, rubbed him with creams and ointments and salves.

They treated each new symptom like a delicious plot twist in an unfolding drama. When a medical assistant dropped a bedpan on the floor and the sudden noise gave Dean another heart attack—a real heart attack, not just a figure of speech, and one that should have been fatal—the doctors practically uncorked a bottle of champagne. All day they _oooh _and _aahhhed _over his muscle spasms and seizures and epic gushing nosebleeds, but at night Sam would often return from his daily battles with journalists and police officers and psychics and shamans to find Dean alone with a garantuan night nurse named Emily, who kept him clean shaven but rarely noticed when he was laying there half dead, deprived of pain medication, cannula askew, oxygen levels tanking, monitors screaming feebly at doctors who were long gone for the night.

"Find anything?" Dean would whisper to Sam, on days when he had the strength to talk.

"Soon," Sam would say. "Soon."

The lowly GP they appointed to deal with Sam was less enthusiastic: _things are going to be different from now on, _she told Sam_,_and loaded him up with pamphlets for everything from angina to period cramps—a formality, really, because Dean's catalogue of diagnoses was made up, named after the doctors who'd put together the symptoms: Reynold's Syndrome, Amberton's Disease, Tebor's Nonclassic Carcinoma, Idiopathic Harrisburg Influenza, and on and on.

The pamphlets had been Sam's lowest point. One day, waiting for Dean to come out of some useless exploratory surgery, he spent a furious hour folding each and every one of them into a perfectly crafted paper airplane, and when he was done he crushed them all into a ball and cried one of those silent, suffocating cries where your jaw is frozen open, silvery lines of drool spilling from the corners of your mouth and you just don't give a shit.

Because he had _searched, _he searched and searched and fucking searched and there was nothing to be found, supernatural or medical, and deep down Sam knew this. Something about the—the _rawhead juice, _something about his brother and the creature frying in that puddle together had fucked Dean up, or was keeping him alive, there was no way to tell which, and god knows what would happened if they tried to heal him, and god knows whether he was going to live or die or get better on his own.

It wasn't long until the doctors figured this out, too. And when they were done with him, when they finally gave Sam his brother back, Dean had been so docile, always with a vacant smile, silent except to thank Sam repeatedly for things Sam didn't need to be thanked for, like cutting his cheeseburger in half or handing him the TV remote. And he was always sheepishly apologizing for _everything_: for oversleeping, for moving so slowly, for being dizzy, for being sore, for spilling his drink because his hands were shaking.

He was hardly Dean at all. And whether it was the rawhead or the testing, the supernatural or the medical, they might never know. It was too late.

And so Sam didn't think he had any other choice. He was exhausted, he wasn't thinking straight, and when the time came, and Dean had said it was okay, _promised_ him that it was okay, Sam thought it was the best thing, he thought—

"HEY. Earth to Sam."

Dean is waggling a bottle of horseradish in his face.

"Quit brooding," Dean orders. "We're here to have a nice breakfast."

"Dude that's so fucking gross." Sam crinkles his nose as Dean squirts a puddle of horseradish into his palm.

It's another one of his weird symptoms, proof that his senses have gone haywire—Dean has no appetite to speak of, but craves condiments. He hoards little ketchup and mustard packets, likes to squeeze it onto his hand and lick it off, sucking it from the webs between his fingers with little grunts of pleasure, and can't explain to Sam why he wants to eat it so bad. Especially since it rarely stays down_._

Dean's eyes roll in ecstasy as he slurps the last morsel off the end of his thumb. "Dude. But it's so fucking good."

Again he lifts the bottle; Sam snatches it away. "Stop it. You're gonna be puking your guts out."

Dean pouts for half a moment, begrudgingly picking up his menu. He studies it with his nose in the air, examining it down his cheeks as if through a pair of half-moon spectacles; a pose he thinks will convince Sam that he's truly interested in eating.

They're sitting at a truck stop. The spasms appear to be over, for now, and Dean's muscles have finally relaxed and the pain is manageable, or so he says. His breakfast—a vanilla Ensure—stayed down this morning and he's told Sam, almost convincingly, that he can eat lunch, that he's genuinely hungry.

"You don't have to order something huge, Dean," Sam says.

_Because you know you can't eat it and I've only got ten dollars, _he doesn't say.

"What if I wanna order something huge?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Then order something huge."

"Know what I want," Dean says, closing the menu. He pulls his hoodie and jacket tighter around himself, shivering. "So. Tell me about the case."

"Um. It's a haunted house."

"And?"

"And the body's buried at the Riverview Cemetery."

"That's it? We drove all the way here from Chicago for a fuckin' salt and burn?"

Sam shrugs. "You gotta better case we can do that instead."

"Darlins'," says the haggard waitress, dropping two filmy glasses of water on their table. "How we doing?"

Her eyes scan both of them and damn it, she gets that look in her eye. Sam tries to get her attention, tries to signal her to _please just keep your fucking mouth shut,_ but it's too late.

"You okay, baby? You look real sick."

Dean stares down at his placemat, and Sam can see him trying to muster up a smile, trying to pretend like every waitress west of the Mississippi hasn't asked him the same question, trying to come up with some stupid quip like _I'm lovesick, baby, _or _I'm sicka being without you. _

"He's getting over the flu," Sam says quickly, and with a rather sour smile adds, "Don't worry, he's not contagious."

"Aww, that's _terrible,_" the waitress coos, because the non-contagious flu is apparently one the world's most unfortunate things. "What you gonna have, sweetheart?"

Dean requests a side of mash potatoes, with no butter, which Sam finishes after he wolfs down his own eggs with hash browns, the cheapest thing on the menu that'll tame his biting hunger.

When the check comes, Sam quickly adds up the total in his head. Two dollars and fifty cents they'll have left, if he doesn't tip.

And he's not gonna.

**OOOO**

Dean's nauseous before they even pull out of the parking lot. Thankfully it's more of a spit-up than a violent expulsion, and this time Sam's prepared—he hands his brother a paper bag lined with a plastic bag, and Dean sags against the passenger window, sedately heaving while Sam drives around looking for a cheap place to stay.

"Dude," Dean pants, as soon as his stomach grants him a reprieve, "We don't gotta stop. M'fine. I'll be fine."

"Don't worry about it, Dean." Sam squints at a motel across the street. "Does that say sixty or sixty-five?"

Dean hunches over his bag and doesn't answer.

"The Unicorn Villa," Sam smirks, "Perfect."

They pull in under a flickering neon interpretation of a winged horse which, Sam points out to Dean, is actually Pegasus.

"Homo," Dean says without any gusto.

"Fuck you," Sam replies with equal energy. "You still sick or can I throw that away?"

Dean clutches the bag to his chest.

"Okay. I'll be right back."

A pudgy kid of about sixteen in a faded Justice League shirt is sitting behind the check-in desk, digging around in his nose with a chubby pinky finger.

"Double, please," Sam says, _and I promise not to beat or rob you. _

The kid extracts the finger, wipes his findings underneath the counter. "You got someone in the car?"

"Um. My brother?"

"I need to write down the driver's license number of all guests."

"Oh. Well I know it, so—"

"I need to check the photograph against the face."

"You fucking serious?"

The kid flashes him an acidic smile. "Lotsa prostitution around here."

Sam can feel himself getting angry, thinks about the gun in his waistband, and—

No.

"Can you make an exception? Please? He's not feeling well. That's why we stopped."

The kid looks around Sam, out through the plate glass window, into the Impala. Dean has one arm propped on the dashboard, head cradled in his hand. The sickbag isn't visible, but the sunlight catches and illuminates a ribbon of saliva still clinging to his lower lip.

"Eww." The clerk says. "Yeah, okay. Just gimme the number."

Thank God for tiny fucking favors. Sam rattles off the driver's license numbers of Matthew and Gunner Nelson and hands him one of their maxed out credit cards, praying, just _praying _for another break, please God, let them have an old machine.

Yes. The kid looks despondently at the credit card, then reaches under the counter for a swiping contraption that looks about a thousand years old. He plunks it on the counter with a deliberate _oomph_.

Ignoring the clerk's assessing gaze, Sam gives him a gleeful, goofy little smile. This buys them two days, maybe three. Enough time for him to go out and hustle right, earn them a few hundred bucks, enough to keep them going for awhile.

Three days he has a place for Dean to rest. Three days he doesn't have to worry.

**OOOO**

Sam helps his brother into the motel room, supporting him around his waist while he walks, and what a relief it is that he doesn't have to carry or drag him, but he gets a deadly whiff of his brother's pits and—"Dude, you need a shower, bad. You _reek_."

Dean laughs airily, pushing Sam away and limping stiffly to the bed, where he throws himself down. "Hey, they gave you a pamphlet on on how to sponge bathe me, dude. How to take care of my bedsores? Don't think I forgot."

Sam snorts. "They also gave me one on how to tell if you're going into labor, Dean."

"See? Not my fault I stink. You're slacking."

Sam knows it's just a joke, one his brother's irritating, deflective jokes, but guilt ices his veins, his throat closes and then before he can stop it, his eyesight is blurry with unshed tears.

Cause truth is, Dean _was _too sick to keep himself clean, which is an easy fact to ignore when you've dumped your brother in a hospital where nurses are around to keep him washed and shaved, to clean his nails and comb his hair and make sure he always looks presentable when you visit so that you can forget that hygiene isn't something that just magically happens, so you don't have to worry yourself about how sometimes he's too sick to give himself a shower, about how _things are going to be different from now on_ and so maybe it _is _your fault that your brother stinks like a fucking hobo, and maybe if you hadn't been so busy being aselfish—

"Hey," Dean says, trying to push himself back off the bed. "_Stop it. _It was a joke--I coulda gone and laid in the bathtub, Sam. That was laziness. You understand me? It is _not _your job."

Sam refocuses his eyes, smiles a little at his brother's _I'm not fuckin' around _face, his brother's pursed lips and oh god, the big purple bags under his eyes—

"_Sam,_" Dean says dangerously, "Stop. It's not your responsibility, you hear me? It's _never_ gonna be your responsibility."

That's the way Sam always seems to do things, though. Too little, too late. Always a big pussy up until the last second, until—

"Sam goddamn it _look at me." _Dean says, suddenly standing nose to nose with him. His hands close tightly around Sam's shoulders. "Enough. We need to talk about this. All of it."

"No," Sam blurts, "Not—not right now, okay Dean? I just want a nap. Let's just go to sleep."

"Sam—"

"Dean, please. I'm just tired."

Dean stares at Sam for a minute, until Sam manages to rearrange his expression into one that doesn't look totally crazed.

Then Dean releases Sam's arms and walks wobbly but steadily into the bathroom all by himself, without Sam's help, and Sam thinks, Sam hopes: _maybe he really is getting better. _

**OOOO**

After his nap Sam goes out to pick up dinner. He puts on his nicest shirt and a tie and goes to a grocery store, wanders around in the parking lot until he finds a receipt, then tells the manager some bullshit story about how when he was shopping last night, the checker left a bag out of his cart.

He pulls up to find his brother standing in the doorway of their motel room in his undershirt and boxers. Dean's not looking so good, skin bluish, translucent, and he's looking down at that goddamn kid, who's wagging a boogery finger in Dean's face.

Dean looks passed the kid's flailing his arms at Sam, a pained, sheepish look on his face: _I'd get rid of the kid myself, Sam, but…_

Sam nearly clips the back of the kid's legs when he pulls in. On purpose.

"What the fuck is going on here?" He says, and slams the car door hard enough to make the kid flinch. Sam's mouth fills with a thousand admonishments that he can't say in front of Dean—_are you blind, you little bastard, can't you see my brother is sick, what the hell is wrong with you, picking on—_

"My credit machine came back online. That card you gave me is no good," The clerk says, "If my dad finds out you're here—"

"Oh," Sam says, hitching the bag of food up his hip while his heart sinks in disbelief. He wonders again why God has it out for them. Was it really too much to ask? To find some shitty motel-- one that doesn't even know the difference between a unicorn and a fucking horse with wings--that still uses ancient credit swipers? And if that _was_ too much to ask, couldn't the credit machine have stayed offline for at least one night? Seriously, God? Six hours?

"I'll have the money for you sometime this evening," Sam says, but the kid is already shaking his head.

"Nuh-uh. I need that money now or you're out on your asses. I'll call the cops."

Sam gets a flash of his brother all pale in handcuffs, rocking back and forth in pain in some holding cell. A ridiculous, melodramatic image, maybe, but it's too much. Sam shoves the grocery bag at Dean and spins on the kid, who can't be more than five foot five, jams his finger in the kid's chest hard enough to knock him onto the hood of the Impala.

"Option A," Sam growls, "You give my brother and I another night, and you have my _word_ that I'll get your money before we clear out in the morning."

"Dude, you've gotta be kid—"

"—Option B. I break your nose."

"I don't see—"

"Then I'll hogtie you to the kitchen sink and let you bleed to death."

"What the fu—"

"JUST," Sam explodes, "_pick one_."

Fear registers briefly on the clerk's face. "I'm calling the police," he says, and before Sam can grab him, he slithers his chubby little ass over the hood of the Impala, slides over the other side and runs like hell toward the office.

"Fuck!" Sam shouts after the boy. "Dean, get some clothes on."

"Sam—"

"Just get some fucking clothes on. _Please._"

Dean stands there in the doorway while Sam rummages around in the truck for a good ten minutes searching for their suppressor. They only have one because Dean's always hated them ("silencers are for pussies afraid to get caught, Sammy"), and it's probably buried at the very bottom of the shitpile their weapons stock has become.

"Come on, Sam. What're you doing?" Dean says.

"Your clean clothes are on the dresser," Sam says, digging through a box of random bullets. "Go sit down before you fall on your face."

"Sam, leave the kid alone. Let's just get out of here." Dean's voice is weak. He's short of breath, swaying badly on his feet. "What you need a gun for, huh? You gonna shoot the kid?"

"I might."

Finally, _finally _his fist closes around the suppressor and he slams the trunk shut with his elbow, his two hands readying the gun.

"I'll be right back," he says, but Dean is already slipping down the door jam, his eyes lolling in his head.

"Dean— shit."

He runs, catches his brother before he has a chance to crack his head open on the pavement and thank god for that because God knows if he'd ever be able to stop the bleeding. With one hand still gripping the gun, he swoops Dean up around the chest, drags him into motel room and deposits him on the bed.

He robs the motel clerk without any fanfare; simply sticks the gun in his nose and pushes him back into the office where no one can see them, quietly shoots a hole in the wall above his head when he mouths off, and locks him in the closet.

A hundred and twenty five bucks, which is nothing. _Nothing. _

He jogs back to their room and throws the door open to find Dean sitting on the edge of the bed, bent forward, his face hidden in folded arms. He's gotten himself dressed but the muscles of his biceps are twitching, and Sam guiltily thinks _goddamn it, don't tell me this shit is starting up again. _

"Dean?"

"Yeah," Dean says without looking up.

"You ready to take off?"

"Yeah." But he doesn't move.

"Hey." Sam plops down next to his brother, rests his hand between Dean's shoulder blades and rubs hasty circles, speed-comforting. "What's up?"

Dean sits up and shakes Sam off, digs his ring figure into the corner of his eye. "Nothin'."

He rubs at his sternum, a frequent tic for him these days.

"Your chest hurtin'?"

"Yeah. And fuck, Sam, you can stop asking me that every goddamn fifteen minutes, cause the answer is always gonna be yes. Jesus Christ."

Sam doesn't—_they _don't have time for this. "Come on, we gotta go. Where's your jacket?"

But Dean doesn't move, just sits there staring at the wall, rubbing at his chest.

Sam slides his hand over the nape of his brother's neck, hastily massages a knot with his thumb, and tries _really _hard not sound impatient. "What's the issue, Dean? You gotta tell me what's wrong or I can't do anything."

Dean uses Sam's shoulder to stand himself up, and then grips him tight, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Sam has to restrain himself from just throwing his brother into a fireman's hold and forcing him into the car.

His brother hobbles over to the window, splits the blinds and looks out into the daylight. "Normally… normally I coulda… I couldn't think of anything. I couldn't think of a goddamn thing to.... I was just so— and he kept _yelling_ at me, and _poking_ at my chest and I just _stood there_ because I never had a—nobody's ever talked to me like… nobody's ever talked to me like that before, Sammy. Never. And I couldn't stop you, you were just gonna... and you..."

Dean turns around and looks at Sam with that face, that _enough is enough and it's time to talk now _face.

Sam drops his head into his palms and groans, because he doesn't want to talk, or fight, and even if he did, now isn't the time. He understands, he understands that Dean used to be one intimidating son of a bitch, that a year ago he might have scared the kid so shitless they would've had a free hotel room for a month, but that's over now, and Sam can hear the sirens, or at least he thinks he can hear the sirens, whining somewhere off in the distance.

When he looks back up, though, Dean has composed himself. He wiggles his eyebrows at Sam and smirks. "Anyway. Are we outta here?"

Sam mirrors Dean's fake smile. "Yeah. We're outta here."

::::::::

Pretty please review!

Unfortunately this will most likely be the last update till the beginning of June. I am _this _close to finishing my bachelor's degree, and if I keep letting fanfic distract me, I'm not gonna make it. Sorry :(


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Hi everybody! I haven't graduated yet (1.5 more weeks!), but I CANNOT STOP WRITING FANFIC! Dear lord, someone schedule me an intervention and help me find a higher power!

Thank you all so much for your kind words… even the "I hate you, where the fuck is the new chapter!?!?!?!" PMs make me smile and provide major motivation. I LUVS hearing what you have to say, even when it's about how miserable this fic makes you feel. In fact those might be my favorite. *evil laughter*

One more thing… so far I'm too, um, neurotic to have this fic beta'd, so all errors are my fault and no one else's.

**Chapter 4 **

Sam shoulders their bags and is halfway out the door before he realizes Dean isn't behind him. _I'll come back for him, _he thinks, and runs to the car, stuffing the luggage in the backseat and _god it's starting to stink here. _Next stop—if they escape—the laundromat.

He comes back to find that Dean's just standing there in the room, staring into the pillowcase of pills.

"Jesus, Dean, can you hear the fucking sirens?"

"Where'd all this come from?"

"Let's _go._"

Dean scowls at him for a moment, twists the bag shut in both hands and starts moving but god, he's so goddamn slow.

"Come on, _hurry._" Sam puts a hand on Dean's back, tries to urge him forward but uses too much force—he forgets how weak Dean is, even now—and shoves him to the ground instead.

Dean falls with a surprised little yelp, the bottles spewing from the mouth of the bag, rolling to the four corners of the motel room, absolutely fucking everywhere and Sam doesn't think he's ever felt more terrible in his life, _but we have to go_, _we have to go we have to go we HAVE TO GO. _

Dean is on the ground sucking at a wound on the palm of one hand and trying to pick up the medication with the other, and Sam can see he's shaking badly, the one bottle he's managed to grab rattling like a maraca.

"Forget it, Dean," Sam says, reaching to pull his brother off the ground.

Dean doesn't seem to hear him, keeps grasping at bottles and can't hold on to more than one at a time—as soon as he picks up one bottle the other falls and he doesn't even seem aware of it.

"I said _forget it. _Let's go!"

Sam can barely hear the sirens, but he can hears them, that's for sure, and he can't even think about what happens if they get here, if they see the car, if they—_dear god in heaven please no—_ get caught.

Dean's not responding to his nudging, just keeps dropping the bottles and picking them back up, so he grabs his brother around the waist and starting running with him toward the car, dragging him under the armpits, his boots scraping against the pavement.

"Get _the fuck_ in there," he shouts, shoving Dean into the passenger seat. He doesn't know where the emotions are coming from but he's _pissed,_ so fucking pissed he can barely see. He slams the door, runs around the other side—

Into the barrel of a gun.

A uniformed officer stands in front of him, radio crackling, a short, squat little man with a bottle-brush mustache, almost like a cartoon cop, and Sam half-expects to see him twirling a billy club in his other hand, the hand that isn't holding the gun, which, as silly as the officer might look, is goddamn real enough.

"Hands in the air," the cop says, calmly, like he's done it a million times before, even in a Podunk shit-ass town like this one.

Sam puts his hands in the air, if only to buy himself a little time to think. He can feel that the gun is gone from his waistband, and he doesn't know where it went, maybe God made it fucking disintegrate, _poof, haha Sammy, whatya gonna do now? _

Another cop appears from around the corner, where the car must be parked, and he's just as surreal and fat and funny-looking as the first one, only with oversized muttonchops and a dome-like belly sagging over his pants. His gun, his very real gun, is also drawn and he's pointing it at Dean.

"Outta the car," he says, with the same cool indifference as his partner.

Dean looks at the cop but doesn't seem to register that he's there, then looks at Sam, poking his head out the window.

"Sam," he calls, voice slurring, "Bleedin', Sam. Bad."

"Outta the car," the cop says, raising his voice just slightly.

"Sam…" Dean extends the bloody hand out the window.

"Sir," the mustached cop echoes his partner, "You need to put your hands up and get outta the car."

"He can't, okay?" Sam takes a step toward the officer, who raises the gun to his face. "Don't point that at him, okay? He's sick, he can't get outta the car, he's really sick."

"Right," mutton-chop cop says. He inches closer to the car, gun still trained on Dean, who's still reaching out to Sammy like no one else is there.

"Sam?" Dean says to the cop.

"Look at him!" Sam practically shrieks. "He's sick, okay? Look at him, he's delirious, he doesn't even know what's going on."

"You drug this boy?" Mutton chop cop says, "Looks like he been poisoned."

"No, it's his heart, okay, he had an accident, he has a heart—"

The mutton-chop cop flings open the door, grabs a handful of Dean's teeshirt as he tumbles out of the car. Dean hits the ground, hard, calls out for Sam at the same time he's crying out in pain, and that's when Sam snaps.

He's not sure what happens, just that his head hurts and mustache cop is on the ground and now Sam is holding his gun, and he spins around to see Dean on his hands and knees, gazing up at mutton chop cop with unfocused, sick, childish eyes and the cop is holding the gun at close range right in Dean's face and _cocking _it, and swings it around and points it at Sam and Sam doesn't have time to think, he just shoots.

And then everything slows down. The bullet hits the cop in the neck. He spins, the force of the spin flinging Dean to the ground. The cop spins, spins like he's in the ice capades, spins a fountain of blood and flesh, spins, falls, lands on his stomach.

Dead.

Sam doesn't have time to be horrified, the other cop is coming up behind him, he can feel it, and without bothering to look he sends his arm straight out, a clothesline, that's what they called it on those stupid fucking wrestling shows Dean used to watch when they were kids, only this clothesline connects squarely with the cop's cheek, and Sam hears the bones crunching beneath the butt of the gun.

"Sam," Dean says, uselessly trying to use the car mirror to stand himself up, "Sam, I'm bleeding."

"Fuck," Sam says to himself. "_Fuck fuck FUCK._"

"Sam, I'm bleeding," Dean repeats, because for him nothing at all has happened, except he's hurt and his brother is ignoring him.

Sam tucks the gun in his waist band, tucks all this into the back of his mind, to think about later, to justify later, to comprehend later, and off somewhere he's pretty sure he hears more sirens, and here and there motel room doors are popping open, he can hear gasps and chatter.

He swoops up his brother, puts him in the car.

"You wanna fucking go to jail?" He hears himself scream as he fumbles with the ignition. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Dean, _what the fuck_?"

Dean stares out of the windshield, still trying to suck at his wound, his hand shaking so badly that his lips can't find a grip. When his mouth comes away from it Sam sees a glob of blood the width of a thumb sliding down his wrist.

"It's not gonna stop bleeding, Sam," Dean says, holding it out to him, catching the glob before it lands on the Impala's seat. "How we gonna get it to stop?"

Sam floors it, Impala's wheels spinning before they lurch forward, and for a minute his mind does the same, he doesn't know which problem to deal with first, Dean bleeding to death _because he's right, it's not gonna stop,_ or keeping the two of them out of jail. He feels a tingle of relief when he remembers that he stole some clotting medication from the pharmacy, which quickly turns to horror because _it's rolling around on the floor in the motel room, _and then all Sam can do is laugh, because Dean's circulation is so beyond fucked that it might've killed him anyway.

"Your shirt clean?"

"Dunno," Dean says. Another syrupy wave of blood oozes from the wound and falls into the pool in his other hand. His hands are blurring now, they're shaking so bad, and his eyes are going half-mast—

"Dean don't you dare fucking pass out!" Sam veers around a slow-moving minivan piled high with bicycles, sending Dean flying against the passenger door. "Stay the fuck awake. Take your shirt off, wrap it around your hand."

Dean looks at the pool of blood in one hand, looks at the blood oozing from the other like he's confused, like the hands don't belong to him, like he doesn't know where he is.

"DEAN," Sam roars, "Wake up. You gotta do this yourself, okay? I can't stop the car. You gotta get a fucking _grip_."

His brother moves like he's underwater, wiping the blood across his jeans, struggling to put the shirt up over his head—he gets so tangled that Sam has to reach over and yank it off for him.

And never mind wrapping it around his hand. Sam keeps the wheel straight with his knee and pulls Dean across the seat, takes the arm across his lap and wraps it tight, wraps it so tight Dean makes that little yelping noise again.

When Sam's done he throws the arm back at Dean, and Dean scoots away from him, cradling the hand against his chest.

"Next time I tell you to move, you fucking _move,_" Sam hears himself saying, and god, he sounds like _Dad _and he doesn't know where it's coming from, just that he's _fucking enraged_, so goddamn angry at Dean for losing his mind at the worst possible moment that he wants to smack him. Dean and all of his stupid pride, his leave-me-alone-I-can-take-care-of-myself _bullshit, _bullshit is what it is, and he's so tired of Dean going into zombie mode, so fucking sick.

He looks like a zombie now, in fact, staring out the windshield, the skin of his chest and arms bruised and sagging, the fingers of his uninjured hand dug deep in the flesh above his heart. He's breathing in shuttering, gasping breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth like they taught him at _that place_, and Sam knows it won't be long before an oxygen tank is a fucking necessity, and suddenly he's angry about that, too.

Sam watches out of the corner of his eye, sees how hard his brother is trying to get a hold of himself, how terrified Dean is _but of what? _And why does the look on his face make Sam so _goddamn mad? _

As pissed as he is, though, Sam knows he's got to calm his brother down because the panic is a dangerous strain on his heart.

"Dean," Sam says, as gently as he can manage, which isn't very gentle at all, "you okay?"

"Yeah," Dean gasps, and dangles his arm over his head to keep it above his heart, like he was taught, like _Dad_ taught him.

And that makes Sam wonder…

"Dean?"

Dean jumps, makes weak eye contact with Sam.

"Dean?"

"Yeah," Dean says, eyes wide and feverish and unblinking.

"You know who I am?" Sam reaches out to squeeze his brother's shoulder, hardly watching the road, "Who am I, Dean?"

Dean swallows, wipes beads of sweat off his forehead with still-trembling hands. "Sam. You're Sammy."

And that's what Sam was afraid of.

**OOOO **

Dean falls asleep—loses consciousness is more accurate—just as the sky blackens, and after awhile Sam's shoulders relax and blood returns to his knuckles, the fear and anger subsiding and now he's exhausted to his bones. He thinks about pulling over but they're only 50 miles out, which isn't far enough.

At some point earlier Sam had ripped the car off the interstate and started down Sherman Highway, an ill-kept goat trail slicing Oregon in half north to south. It was an impulsive decision but he realizes now it was a smart move—it'll take them several hundred miles in the wrong direction and they'll probably lose a day, maybe more, judging from the pace at which they've been traveling, but Sam will zigzag across the state for a month if that's what it takes to keep the cops from following his trail of robberies, his trail of murders but _god don't think about that right now_.

Dean's makeshift bandage is starting to seep, and he's still shirtless and shivering, teeth chattering with every exhale. Sam feels his anger bubbling again and takes a deep breath, pushes it down, away, with everything else. He turns down a country road, drives until the gravel disappears and the Impala is practically sinking in the dirt, and stops under a tree.

He pulls Dean close to inspect his wounds. Aside from the cut on his hand—which is _Sam's _fault— he's got nasty black bruises but is otherwise okay. The bleeding is slow, thank god, but steady. It's a tiny cut, barely a scrap, something a healthy person would totally ignore, if they ever noticed it at all.

But with Dean they have to worry about stopping the bleeding, which Sam knows from experience can go for hours and hours before it starts to clot, and then there's infection, and if they're lucky he'll only get goddamn staph and if they're unlucky he'll get something that's immune to antibiotics, and he might as well and who gives a fuck now because they don't _have _any antibiotics, those are gone along with everything else.

After some cajoling he gets Dean open his eyes but he's totally lethargic, so Sam robotically rewraps his hand with the cleanest shirt he can find, wrestles him into an undershirt, then a long sleeved shirt and finally a hoodie, pulls a beanie over his ears and moves him to the back seat, swaddles him in blankets, arranges him on a couple of pillows, the still-bleeding hand resting above his head.

Once Dean is settled Sam gets out of the car, closes the door and slides down into the dirt. He looks up at the moon and just breathes, tries to conjure up the memory of Dean lying in that fucking puddle, Dean half-dead in the hospital, Dean quiet and stoic and paralyzed with pain all those days after the testing. He tries to use these memories to remind himself that _none of this is Dean's fault _but it's not working.

Because Dean's not even trying.

Dean's just gonna let him do everything, let Sam take care of everything, and he's not even gonna try to get better, to be better.

And even when Dean is awake and talking and cracking jokes, pretending to be himself, Sam is still alone, always alone, dragging his fucking zombie brother this way and that way and every way, forever, and there's no end, no end except jail or death for both of them.

It's so close that Sam can see it and feel it now, so tangible he can almost touch it, tickling his neck, whispering in his ear, pushing and pushing and pushing:

His breaking point. He's almost there.

And then he wonders if maybe it's already behind him now, somewhere back in the Midwest, at the Gas-N-Go, on the floor of the Elm Avenue Pharmacy.

Maybe even scattered amongst the rattling pill bottles at Unicorn Villa.

Scattered among the dead.

:::::

To be continued…

Before anyone starts sending me hate mail about Sam's attitude in this chapter, I ask you to bear with me. Most anyone who has had a seriously ill loved-one can tell you that it's perfectly normal to feel extreme anger towards the person who is sick, almost like they've betrayed you in some way—it's simply a stage of grief.

So… please review? *blows you a kiss, runs and hides*


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: First: **Sorry for the delayed update. First I graduated from college (OH MY GOD I'M A COLLEGE GRADUATE! THE VERY FIRST ONE IN MY FAMILY!), and then my friends and family were all up in my grill for days and days, and then this chapter was a total bitch to write, and ANYWAY. Updates should be much more frequent from now on. I'm thinking once a week, probably, hopefully more.

I also totally dropped the ball on replying to reviews. I'll do better next time, promise, but for now *BIG MASS THANK YOU AND WET SLOPPY KISSES FOR ALL*

**Second, **no, this isn't a deathfic, cause I'm a big weenie and could never kill one of the boys. **Third, **this AU is highly likely to be free of Dad/Bobby/Other Paternal Figures, because the story was partially conceived one day while I when I was pondering the question, "what if the boys had no one to run to?" I could have written Bobby and Dad out of the story, but it would've sounded a bit contrived, so… sorry :( *dodges flying fists* **Fourth, **my LJ is finally in proper working order! wave-obscura DOT livejournal DOT COM. Stop and by and friend me (you can read my haiku)! It gets lonely over there sometimes…

**CHAPTER 5**

Maybe none of this would have happened if Sam didn't have a fetish for "normal," if Sam weren't so eager to trust "normal" people, if he didn't love to bask in the quiet dullness of the average, if he weren't so lulled by the comforts of the mundane, if even hearing the word _mundane _didn't practically set his heart aflutter, if he hadn't been so hellbent on having some of it for himself.

But he was still his father's son, or more accurately his brother's son, and so, after the accident, when it came to trying to to cure Dean, Sam had turned to the supernatural first.

He called every contact in Dad's journal, paraded quack psychics and scamming assholes in and out of their motel room, made useless trips back and forth across the Midwest— a healing tent in Nebraska here, a string of Colorado mega-churches there—before he finally flipped a bitch and dragged his exhausted brother to a clinic in a little black hole called Assumption, Illinois, and wasn't that hilarious, because he was about to make the worst assumption of his entire life: the supernatural had let them down and so, he decided, and the natural, the_ normal, _was what was going to fix Dean.

At that point Dean was doing okay, in comparison. His chest still ached relentlessly, sometimes so bad that painkillers did very little and he'd curl up with his face in a pillow and let Sam pet his back for hours, up and down and up and down until he was lulled to sleep_. _The muscle spasms were excruciating, but few and far between. He tired easily, his appetite wasn't great, he was pale and slept a lot, but he could walk fine on his own and was argumentative and pushed Sam away whenever he could and was, in general, a huge pain in the ass.

Then someone noticed that there was no reason Dean's heart should still be working and that was the day they all descended, the cardiologists and pulmonologists and neurologists and geneticists and neuropharmacologists, and that was the day they whisked Dean to a shining medical research facility with a private room and soft sheets and a sofa in the corner of the room for Sam to crunch himself into at night.

They assured Sam that Dean was fading fast, made it sound like his heart was five seconds away from exploding if they didn't do something. Free care, they said. We can fix your brother, they said. He may not ever be normal, they said, but we can improve the quality of his life.

Dean had just wanted to wait and see. He said he was feeling better every day and maybe in time they could find a supernatural cure but Sam lost it, screamed at Dean in front of the doctors _I'm so sick of this 'I laugh in the face of death' shit, I'm not gonna stand around while you die!_

_Okay, Sammy,_ Dean said, _Okay._

This is where, in retrospect, Sam starts to hate himself. Maybe Dean wasn't ever going to be normal again... but maybe Sam could.

Because, truth be told, that's exactly why Sam agreed to the testing, and if it hadn't been for his sick fascination with this life he could never have, maybe he and Dean would be squatting in an old hunting cabin somewhere right now, collecting dusty books, passing out advice to young hunters, cleaning guns, spitting chaw, drinking too much and basking in everyday miseries, doing whatever it was that retired hunters do. And who knows? Who fucking knows, maybe they could have figured out a way to be content. Maybe even happy.

Dean was so goddamn sick once the testing started, so goddamned sick, and Sam just sat there at Dean's bedside, sometimes just fucking sat at Dean's bed all day, just holding his hand, and every so often Dean signed, a little furrow in his brow, and Sam held Dean's palm to his face and _it_ _hurt, _god it hurt to so desperately need somebody not to die, a sharp, solid mass in his chest that choked him, made breathing impossible.

But Sam knew he could be in as much pain as he wanted, he could hope and want and wish and pray until the pain swallowed him right up and his own heart exploded right in his chest and it was never going to do any good so then Sam tried to bargain with God. He thought of all sorts of good deals for God, made him several offers he couldn't refuse until he realized making bargains is just what people do, and then he promised not to bargain with God, ever, if God would just do this one thing for him, which he knew was bargaining too but god, jesus Christ holy fucking hell _shit_ he _needed _Dean to be alive so bad.

Not that it mattered, because apparently God only listens to normal people.

The lowly GP—the one who gave Sam all the pamphlets— began to appear at nights, offering him coffee that was thick like tar and smelled like campfire.

Sam didn't like her. He had a feeling she was just there to watch him, to report his movements to the rest of the team, to make sure he didn't try to walk off one night with their prize possession.

They didn't talk. Night after night she read newspapers in Farsi and Portuguese, put down notes in a leather-bound journal and handled Dean with a condescending gentleness that made Sam want to put her through a wall.

What pissed him off most, though, was the way that Dean looked at her. Even when he was in a stupor, which was most of the time, he looked up her in the same grateful way an ill and delirious child might look up at his nurturing mother, not that Sam would know what that looked like, but he looked at them and he _knew, _but he didn't quite understand his love affair with _normal_ then and so he didn't know where the anger was coming from.

One night the lowly GP folded her newspaper and looked at Sam.

"Look for this place," she whispered.

Sam was so used to the silence that her words made him jump.

He glared at her. "What?"

"Look for this place, anywhere. Just look."

"What—?"

"Don't ask," she said, and Sam saw that her hands were trembling in her lap.

"What place?" Sam hissed.

"This place. _Here._ Please. Just look." And she bent back over her newspaper and wouldn't say any more.

The next night the lowly GP was gone and Sam never saw her again. But crumpled in Dean's fist was a piece of paper, and on the piece of paper was scrawled a single word:

_Harvest. _

Sam didn't know what it meant and frankly he didn't care, because the doctors always assured him that after _this_ pill, after _this_ injection, after we hook this machine that goes _kerplunk_ up to his pinky finger, after we remove his gallbladder and ring it out like a sponge just to stuff it back into his body with edible paste, after that _you'll be that much closer to normal, Sam. _

And he believed it. Believe the lies they were telling him and especially believed the lies he was telling himself. He didn't think he could do any worse than that.

And then he did.

**OOOO**

At some point in the night Sam must've just keeled over like a diseased tree, because he wakes up face down in the dirt next to the Impala, groggy and coughing up little pieces of gravel, and without moving or opening his eyes he whispers, to nobody in particular: "…turn myself in."

The words feel good on his lips, even though he's only said it to himself, even as his heart grows hot and painful and oozes into the already storming, twisting knot in his stomach. Because he's never admitted it to himself but the minute it crosses his lips he knows it's true—it's over, this is all fucking over, over before it even began, this doomed little road trip, the rest of his life, the rest of his brother's life. Over. Forever.

He's surprised by how dead the realization makes him feel. It seems like maybe he should start crying or preparing a goodbye speech, or maybe preparing a goodbye speech _while_ crying, but it's like none of this is part of him anymore, and his brain paints a ridiculous scenario for him in which somewhere outside his body he rocks Dean back and forth like a goddamn run-over puppy and lays him out in a meadow and surrounds him with little white flowers and then walks to the nearest police station with his arms outstretched and says something lame and iconic like "I cannot tell a lie" or "I will fight no more forever" and then the fucking credits will role and he'll wake up in a different life, or maybe the same one, just reset and ready for the great big massive do-over he's been waiting for since he was six months old.

Sam can't believe he ever thought this shit was going to work out, that he actually thought he could take Dean on some simple hunt, a last hurrah and then they'd settle down somewhere, own a crafts booth at the state fair, get Dean a job as a greeter at Wal-Mart, or whatever the fuck it is that disabled people do, and what the fuck, exactly, did he have in mind?

Maybe he won't turn himself in. Maybe instead he'll figure out how to get Dean some hospice care, maybe a suicide doctor because maybe that's what Dean would want, and maybe then he can be with his brother when he finally passes away because god, he doesn't want Dean to die alone, and maybe he can hide from the cops until then.

Maybe he could do it if…

His mind jumps back to his never-ending to-do list, getting supplies, painkillers and bandages and food and the like but _Jesus Christ, _he's gotta think about the big picture here, he can't think about Dean's pain anymore, because after his profound selfishness at the hospital his primal urge to take the pain away is how he got them into so much trouble in the first place.

If he would have set aside the panic of seeing his brother in such terrible pain, if even for a moment, maybe he would have noticed the Impala was running out of gas…

If he had just let Dean _hurt, _just for a little while, if he had just waited a few more hours, picked up a fucking rock and thrown it through the window of the pharmacy while it was still closed…

If he would have ignored that horrible noise Dean made when the cop dragged him out of the car…

But what's done is done, he robbed and he stole and he raised his gun to the faces of innocent people and now a cop is dead, maybe two cops, and he's face down in the dirt outside the car in the middle of nowhere with his once-big-now-small brother, who's beat up, and in pain and probably dying, and also he's _losing his damn mind_ and maybe Dean even bled to death in the middle of the night and—

Sam's tempted to lay in the dirt forever but his body moves automatically, hauling him off the ground, knees popping, neck popping, elbows popping, and he peeks in the car window at Dean, whose eyes are open and staring, mouth hanging, and for a split second he thinks maybe Dean _is _dead and is sickened by an emotion that feels scarily like relief.

But then Dean says "hey" and Sam opens the door and says "hey" and Dean moans and groans and panting through the pain and stiffness he lugs himself out of the car and wobbles over to a tree and starts pissing while Sam stands as close as he dares in case Dean falls over.

The sound of pissing peters off and Dean zips his pants and spins around and his sunken eyes are dark and angry. "What the fuck happened last night?"

Sam wishes he had a pause button to push so he could think about it for a minute, but he doesn't, so he plays dumb. "What do you mean?"

Dean shakes his head, limps to the car, and they assume their positions, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the hood of the Impala.

It's not very warm out but the sun is glaring. Dean goes to scratch his head, realizes he's wearing a beanie and with a disgusted growl he tears it off and throws it on the ground. He frees his hand from the bloody shirt, pokes at the wound a little. It's clotted, thank god, and while it's a little inflamed, it doesn't look infected. Not yet.

Sam studies his brother, who looks terrible, for sure, but also he's never looked more, well, _angelic _is the word he wants to use but _ghostly _is probably more accurate. Something about the bluish tint of his skin, green eyes extra bright, if perhaps a little crazed and crusty with sleep, his pursed lips and beard stubble and freckles and too-long hat-hair. Sam needs to get his brother a haircut before they start looking like twins.

A haircut. Ha. Sam remembers, again, that he killed someone last night, maybe two someones, which means _no more normal-people haircuts for us, ever_, and it snaps him back to reality and he realizes Dean has been talking at him for several minutes.

"…nothin' good," he's saying, "You gotta let me help you, Sam."

Sam wishes he'd been listening. He could have figured out how much Dean knows. Doesn't seem to matter though because his mouth won't work anyway, he just squints at the horizon and feels tears gathering in his eyelashes.

"…corpse, Sam," he hears Dean say.

Sam jumps at the word. "What?"

"I said I'm not a corpse, Sam. I'm not gonna fall over and die if…" Dean takes him by the chin and arranges his head so that they're looking each other in the eye, but it's hard, so he stares at a little scar above Dean's eyebrow and tries to remember where it came from.

He shuffles through memories of ghosts and poltergeists and demons but can't match the injury, and then he remembers that once upon a time it was an eyebrow piercing—when Dean was seventeen he'd dated some woman ten years his senior who'd convinced him to do it. Sam hears their dad yelling about how it makes Dean look like a queer, and take it out, now, that's an order.

"Hey," Sam says with a giggle, "Remember Faye?"

Dean is still talking; his mouth freezes mid-vowel. "What the fuck, Sam? _Focus._ Tell me what's _wrong._"

Sam laughs again, because silly Dean, he can't tell him what's _wrong. _Then Dean'll just tire himself out and maybe even kill himself trying to act like a fuckin' hero, which would be a little more tragedy than Sam can handle at the moment, thank you anyway.

"Nothing's _wrong,_" Sam says, "It's just harder than I thought. You know. Taking care of you."

He can't believe _that's_ what comes out of his mouth, of all the things he could have said, but on second thought it was a good idea because surely Dean will clam up and go silent now, now that attention has been drawn to his illness, and maybe that will buy Sam some time to straighten out his head, which he really needs to do right now, especially since he has no idea what he can lie about and what he has to fess up to and Dean is talking again, damn it, and he hasn't been listening.

Dean leans toward him, and then Sam finds that his ear is pressed to Dean's chest. Sam can feel his brother's heart beating, weak but also frantic and uneven, like a lame racehorse galloping frantically to a finish line. He feels boney arms around him and squirms for a minute because surely it's a walking skeleton, trying to crush him to death—

But it feels and smells like his big brother and goddamn it, that's gonna have to be enough.

He's been wanting this, needing this, but he didn't think he was entitled to it anymore, to the right to hide himself in his brother's chest and cry like a little baby, and maybe he's not entitled but he does it anyway, and he feels Dean's hand sliding up and down his back and _god, fuck, shit _this might be the last time this ever happens and then he's _wailing. _He sounds like a bereaved mother throwing herself on the coffin of her dead son, he can't believe the horrible sounds coming out of his mouth but he can't stop.

"Jesus, Sammy," he hears Dean say, "Jesus, it's gonna be _okay. _We'll figure this out, okay? Come on."

"No it won't," Sam hears himself cry into Dean's chest. And then, before he can stop himself, "I fucked up, Dean. I really fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad…"

He feels Dean tense up, feels his poor racing heart shift into warp speed, and Sam expects to be shoved away but instead Dean's hands move to either side of his face, nudging him upward, and then Sam is looking his brother in the eye again, which is the last thing in the world he wants to be doing.

"Sam, listen to me," Dean says, shaking his brother a little. "You didn't do anything, you hear me?"

"I _killed a cop,_ Dean. I fucking killed a _cop_."

Dean's hands fall away, pain shoots across his face, for a minute he looks at Sam and says nothing, just pokes gingerly at the spot above his heart where his chest always seems to hurt the worst.

"Sam… you didn't."

"Dean—just…" But there's nothing appropriate to say. Don't freak out? Calm down? It's not that big a deal? And there's no way to _untell _his brother and so he says "fuck, Dean. _I'm sorry."_

Sam tries to fall back into his brother's chest, because that's where he wants to stay, forever, if possible, but Dean's outstretched hand forces him to stay where he is.

"No, Sam. _Listen to me. _Something is very wrong here."

Sam practically guffaws, spraying tears and maybe a little drool in his brother's face. "Gee, Dean, you fucking think so?"

Dean's hands close around his face again, so hard Sam thinks maybe he's going to twist it right off his neck. "That's not what I mean—Sam, I'm telling you that you didn't kill anybody."

Sam is blinded by a fresh wave of tears. Jesus Christ, if only it were true. "Dean… you were so fucking out of it last night."

"Sam, _listen to me_. I don't know what the fuck was going on in your head, but you were screaming at _nothing, _okay? Screaming about sirens and there _weren't any. _There wasn't nothing there, okay? Not a damn thing."

"And I'm telling you that you spent all night in fucking LaLa Land."

"Well I guess that makes two of us. Where's your phone?"

"My…?"

"Your phone, Sam. Where's your goddamn phone?"

Sam produces it from his pocket, stares at it for a moment before Dean snatches it out of his hand.

He punches at the buttons and curses under his breath. "…how to work this fucking thing… here,"— he shoves it back at Sam—"check the local news."

Sam looks down at the phone, up at his brother, down at the phone, up at his brother.

"Sam. Do it. Just check. I'm telling you, just check."

Sam wishes, more than anything, that he was still laying in the dirt. He doesn't want to read about what he did, feels like if he read it in print it would make it… too official, like an honest-to-god part of human history: _Sammy Winchester, Murderer. _

He should just hand himself over, get it over with. Sam imagines laying down on the hard mattress of a prison cell, laying his head against the scratchy pillow, laying down and sleeping for days and days and maybe never waking up, he'd just lay down and die and then it would all be over…

"_Sam," _Dean demands, in that tone that Sam is always compelled to obey. "Do it."

Hope presses feebly at Sam's heart as he tries to hold his phone steady, eyes furiously scanning an article about the Unicorn Villa.

… _is badly shaken after being robbed at gunpoint by a belligerent customer at his father's motel…_

…_used fake identification and credit card…_

…_ described as a 'big black boat,' which, according to police reports, was likely a 1970s Cadillac… _

…_appeared to head west on I-84…_

Nothing about dead cops.

Nothing at all.

Sam checks the AP and _The Oregonian _and a couple of local television websites and finds a tiny story about a tall man who robbed a pharmacy in Hermiston, and thank god the pharmacist was so busy babbling about his Berkeley-bound daughters because the police sketch is terrible, makes Sam look like a cock-eyed Ashton Kutcher.

But that's it.

Nothing.

Sam's first impulse is to jump in the air, click his heels together and then fall to his knees to just _thank god. _

But no. Maybe he's feeling a little loopy but can't be a simple matter of going insane. Deep in his gut he can still feel the cop's bones giving away underneath his gun, can still hear the repulsive sound of the bullet flying through the cop's neck…

And what about the pregnant girl he robbed at the gas station? And her fucking brother, the one who somehow _knew real his name_—

"Holy _shit_."

"What? Sam, what?"

"Dean, this…" He looks up at his brother, terror and joy coursing through his veins all at once. "This is supernatural. It has to be. This is a fucking hunt."

:::::

To be continued…

So… didn't just pull this out of my ass, I swear. Go look at the last chapter—I left ya'll plenty of hints. :D

Please review...


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: **Okay, so it's been a little more than a week since the last update. I'm sorry. My real life like, exploded. Everywhere. And I've been busying scraping it off the walls. Don't worry, though, nothing too awful or too permanent :D

Dear Justme: Thank you for all your reviews. I love you. I do. And I wish you'd sign in so I could reply, because you always have such great things to say! It hurts me that I can't, man, it cuts me deep. Just thought you should know.

**Chapter 6**

So it was a hunt.

Great.

After Sam's big realization he and his brother lapse quickly into silence, because _hooray_, Sam isn't a cop killer, but last night he was trapped in a delusion or hallucination or was driven temporarily insane by something, and that wasn't necessarily better, was it?

It certainly doesn't make Dean any less sick, or change the fact that they're still standing in the middle of nowhere with a hundred and twenty-five bucks to their names and hardly any gas.

They have a thousand more pressing things to worry about, but all Sam can think of is the sound of his hysterical wailing, the way he clung to his brother, Dean's skinny arms around him— he made his sickbrother _hold him, _for christ's sake_—_and how ridiculous he must have looked pointing an imaginary gun at imaginary police officers, how scared shitless Dean must've been while Sam was wigging out, and he was so _rough_ with Dean and he made Dean sleep in the car covered in his own blood and Jesus-Christ-in-a-casserole, did he really curl up in the dirt last night and cry himself to sleep?.

Dean just sits on the hood of the Impala, just sits there looking ill and cold and sleepy, stares at the ground, hugs his stomach, which makes him look more ill and skinnier and colder and sleepier and like he doesn't care much about anything—in fact he looks like maybe he's about to nod off, and Sam knows it's his job, yet again, to answer the question of the year: _what the hell do we do now?_

Sam doesn't understand it, he really doesn't. For his whole life his brother has formed plans and barked orders at him while suffering from all sorts of injuries, gushing blood, holding dislocated limbs in place, applying pressure to his own gunshot wounds. "DON'T BURN IT YET, SAM," he remembers Dean screaming once, "MY FUCKING PINKY IS STILL IN ITS MOUTH. JUST HOLD THE LOWER JAW, I'LL GET IT." Dean had been mauled to shit that time—the creature had ripped away all the meat between his ribs and yet he still dove back into its drooling jaws to retrieve his bitten-off finger and then sat in the car and sewed the fucking thing back on by himself while bleeding from his ribs like a stuck fucking pig, but now he's just gonna sit here and let Sam figure out what to do? Now it's all up to Sam?

"So what the fuck do we do now?" Sam blurts aloud, and the acid in his voice surprises even him.

Dean flinches out of his trance, masking a sharp intake of breath with an airy cough. He straightens his shoulders a little, grimaces, shakes off his daze.

"Um. We got any money?"

"A little."

"Food?"

Sam thinks for a minute about where the groceries might have gone. If there ever _were _any groceries. "I handed you a bag of food. I think. When I was roughing up that kid."

Dean rolls his eyes toward the sky, trying to remember. "I don't— I don't know, dude."

"Funny, I thought you were supposed to be the lucid one."

Dean shrugs. "That fucking kid, man. I wasn't feeling so great."

"What about after that?"

"When I…fell over… I don't know. All the blood rushed out of my head. Like I was in shock or something."

"Then how did you know I was…" Sam doesn't know how to finish the sentence. _Crazy? Insane? Hallucinating? Being a spazzing flash-backing idiot?_

His brother doesn't answer. He rolls his neck, a dozen bones popping, and picks some glop out of his eyelashes before he says, "Let's just take a minute, okay? We'll clean up, find a place to wash clothes, sit down and figure this out."

Sam scoffs outwardly but flutters with relief on the inside. "Dean, we should—"

"Whatever this thing is, Sam? It can wait. The hunt can wait. You need to clear you head, and we need a plan before… we need a plan before it gets bad again."

_Before my pain gets bad again. _For a moment they're both stunned into awkward silence by the statement. Sam clears his throat to say something but Dean beats him to it:

"We don't clean this car out soon, fuckin' dysentery is gonna get us before the whatever-it-is does."

Dean's delivery is all wrong, fatigued and half-assed, but Sam laughs anyway, maybe a little too hard but fuck it, he can't remember the last time anything was funny.

"Okay," he says, "I'm hungry. What should we eat?"

"Whatever you want."

"Christ, Dean, just once will you eat without making me bully you into it?"

Dean arches his back a little and looks harassed, and Sam sighs in an overdone manner that doesn't even begin to express how frustrated he is because yeah, his brother's probably feeling like shit, what with the wholly unnecessary drama and bullshit of the last few days, but _seriously. _It's bad enough that Sam has to fight the whole rest of the world to keep them alive, now he has to fight Dean too?

He thinks about saying this aloud until he realizes how lame and melodramatic it sounds, and so instead he glares at Dean, waiting for an answer.

Dean looks at him tiredly. "I tried, dude, and I'm sicka pukin'. Just. Lay off."

"Try harder."

"Believe it or not, Sam, I don't do it just to piss you off," Dean says with sudden venom, "And we'll get to that, okay? We'll get to _all _that, fuck, we'll talk about whatever you want, we can play twenty questions about Dean's Mysterious Heart Condition, Sam, but right now? The car smells like blood and puke and _ball sweat_ and I'm already trying not to harf all down the front of this nice clean hoodie and I don't want to fucking talk about it right now, you understand?"

Sam finds himself smiling. "Okay."

"Okay." Dean frowns suspiciously. "Okay," he repeats, less growly this time, and puts his hand on Sam's shoulder. "Help me up. Slow."

Sam puts his arm around Dean's back and starts to pull him off the hood of the Impala, but—

"OW! Ow, fuck, Sam, _slow_. You gotta go slow. _Fuck_."

Slowly, very slowly, Sam pulls his brother up and Dean grips his shoulders, head hanging between their chests, cursing under his breath.

"Dude," Dean pants with a breathless little laugh. "_Dude._ It's almost funny sometimes."

Sam doesn't ask what Dean could possibly find funny. He doesn't want to know.

He chews his lip against the urge to cross-exam his brother about what, exactly, is going on. He fears—no, he's fucking _terrified—_of another full-body muscle spasm, jesus god they can't go through that again, he can't handle it if Dean goes away again, doesn't see how Dean could even _survive _it when he's already so worn out.

"Dean," he says in what he hopes is a casual voice, "If you—we need to take care of it right away if..."

"No, it's this shit." Dean lifts his shirt, and the entire right side of his body is just _black_ with bruises.

"Jesus. Did I—?"

"Nah," Dean flicks at a piece of gravel stuck to his hip with the same kind of "ow" one would grant an annoying hangnail. "I was trying to—I fell. Don't worry about it."

"Fuck, Dean—"

"Don't pout, it's just a little sore."

"You want me to…?"

"_No. _But could you. There should be some… in the. You know. By the thing."

Sam nods and runs to the back seat, starts digging for a clean (clean_er)_ pair of jeans. Dean's are still, well, _crusty _will bloody hand prints.

"And Sammy," he hears Dean call, "toothbrush and deodorant, _please_. You stink like a truck stop waitress."

Sam's so out of practice when it comes to smiling that his cheeks ache.

**OOOO **

They decide to clean up a bit before they take off, go through their regular parked-in-the-middle-of-nowhere routine—scraping mud from boots and knees and elbows, brushing teeth without water, shaving blindly— and goddamn does it feel good to be doing something they always do.

Sam digs out the cassette adapter and makes Dean listen to Ray LaMontagne because it's before noon on a Wednesday and they're more than fifty miles from a town with a population over 2,000 and those are the terms under which he gets to choose the music ("I don't wanna hear it, Dean—you _said._").

"_Whooooo ammm IIIII to play-eee Goddddddd,"_ Dean half sings, half screeches along with the song in a high pitch, mocking whine, _"I don't know what's for reaaallllll anymororororororoe! I just think if we can keep our hearts togetherrrrrrr… maybe we can make this last a liiiiiiiiiiifetiiiiiiiiiiiiiime. _Yuck."

Halfway through the song he changes it to CCR and mutter-sings to himself as he shaves in the rearview mirror, but instead of arguing over stereo rights, Sam elects to trek out across the middle of nowhere to burn Dean's bloody clothes.

He stands downwind of the flames, breathes in the smoke, lets his eyes water, and from a distance perceives his brother with horror.

Dean is walking the length of the Impala, leaning heavily on the car, using its lines for balance. Sam hasn't really been more than six feet from Dean since, well, since they left _that place, _at least not while still in eyeshot. He's grown used to the skim-milk skin, the weary eyes, the hitching breath. But from here Dean is just silhouette, slight and tiny against the orange hills, a threadbare, two-dimensional projection that God could unceremoniously flick from the face of the earth with his thumb and forefinger.

And so _skinny_. Down forty, maybe even fifty pounds.

But Sam promised himself he wouldn't think about stuff like that. Not today, when everything is quiet and kinda-sorta-almost normal and he and his brother are cleaning up last week's mess. Together. Finally, together.

Like Scarlett O'Hara—and goddamn, would Dean laugh himself into seizures if he heard Sam make such a reference—but like Scarlett O'Hara Sam keeps telling himself, over and over, "I'll think of it tomorrow," because things will still be fucked tomorrow and they'll still _need need need _tomorrow and if there's no running from hopelessness and evil, why not just _stop, _just for a minute, take a breath and let the horror blow right past you?

_Because sooner or later it'll double back and bite you in the ass, _he hears Dad say.

But Dad's not here and isn't ever going to be. And tomorrow is another fucking day.

**OOOO**

The hundred and twenty-five dollars apparently wasn't real. Sam searches the pocket of every pair of jeans they have, including the ones his brother is wearing.

There's no money.

He doesn't say anything, lets Dean doze while he searches for a laundromat. He thinks maybe he should be looking for money before he looks for a laundromat, but before they left Dean said _look for a laundromat _so that's what he's doing, and he doesn't want to wake Dean up, though he knows he needs to let go of the stupid idea that sleep is somehow going to help heal his brother, because Dean could sleep straight through a week and it wouldn't make any fucking difference.

Then Sam finds a laundromat but they don't have any quarters and Sam doesn't know where to get any, besides robbing a convenience store, and he's all done with that.

"Dean," he says, gently shaking his brother, "Dean, we don't have any quarters."

"Huh?" Dean says, peering sluggishly through half-open eyes.

"Quarters. For laundry."

"Oh. Yeah." Dean makes a little breathy "ugghhhh" noise as he pulls himself upright. "Put the Axe in with my darks, would ya?"

"My aftershave?"

"Huh?" Dean's eyes open all the way and he shoots Sam a look. "No, no stupid— the axe. The _axe. _The weapon?"

"Oh. Why?"

Dean struggles with the door. Finally it flies open and he climbs out. "Just. Do it."

Sam doesn't dare speculate about what Dean plans to do with an axe. Honestly he doesn't care, he's too thankful that Dean has any plan at all.

It's sad, but Sam thinks that maybe being lifted of the responsibility of finding money for laundry makes him feel ten thousand times more relieved than the knowledge that he's not a murder.

And that's weird. But it's also something he chooses not to think about right now, during this brief respite that God has been kind enough to grant them. _I'll think of it tomorrow. _

His hysteria whips back at him with enough force to leave him breathless then, because that's not true, they've been granted reprieve by _something, _something that made him hallucinate, or lose his mind, or maybe even controlled his mind, and holy fuck—

"_Sam_." Dean calls from the doorway of the laundromat, "stop it. It'll wait, okay? It'll fucking wait."

Sam's not sure if that's true. But Dean said it, so he knows it won't do any harm to believe it anyway.

**OOOO**

"Alright, patrons," Dean calls, clapping his hands together. A girl who can't be more than twenty and an old man look up at him, and for a minute Sam thinks Dean is gonna whip out a gun or start hacking them up with the axe, and why not, that's probably the best plan that Sam would have been able come up with.

But instead he clears his throat and continues: "there's been an, uh, an uh, a terrorist threat. We have to evacuate this facility immediately—you can come back for your laundry in three hours."

An impatient huff explodes from the woman, but she scurries at light speed to her car and screeches away. The old man scratches at the hair in his ears, grumbles to himself and spends many tedious minutes restacking his quarters before caning his way out of the building and down the street.

When he finally shuffles around the corner, Sam turns to his brother. "I can't believe they bought that. I can't believe you _tried _that."

"Oh come on. We totally don't use the terrorism explanation enough. Remember Dad and the bacterial warfare at the haunted sandwich shop at Iowa State? People always run screaming."

"Jesus, Dean…"

"You bring the axe?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. Let's get some money."

Ten minutes later Sam is leaning on the axe handle huffing and puffing, and Dean is looking at him with a self-satisfied grin on his face, waving over two hundred dollars in ones and fives, and there's a hundred more dollars worth of quarters, easy, scattered at their feet.

Breaking into a quarter dispenser machine. Sam is _enraged _at himself for not thinking of it first, and he's even more enraged when he learns that this whole time a little hunk of metal in a box of odds and ends in the trunk of the Impala—a little hunk of metal that he always assumed was useless—is actually a _meter key._

"It'll open almost any parking meter," Dean says, "Good for emergencies. Of course, a lot of places use those solar-power pay station things now, and most of the time you can just stick your boot through those or pry it open with a crowbar if you wanna be more quiet about it. They pay better, too."

"_Dean,_" Sam says, gritting his teeth. "Why didn't you—"

"I _told _you. I told you about both a week ago. You were too busy fretting about the cheeseburger I threw up."

Is Sam _that bad_ of a person, that his mind immediately jumped to _robbery _when he needed money? He thinks back, thinks about all those vending machines he passed on the road, how maybe there's 50 bucks, tops, in each of them, but fuck, 50 times 15 is $750, and they could have holed up for _weeks _on that much money.

"There difference is," Dean says, reading Sam's mind, "that you don't know how to think like a scumbag, Sam. But that's a good thing, okay? Most of the time. But you can't try to abide by the law until you're so desperate that you can't think straight, or you'll do something stupid, okay, like committing a felony where a misdemeanor will do. Right? You did something stupid cause you were desperate. And because you were alone. And I'm sorry for that."

They stare at one another, jaws working, verging dangerously on a tender moment.

Then Dean clears his throat. "Get these quarters picked up, would you?"

**OOOO**

"I'm not dying, Sam," Dean says, leaning toward him, elbow-to-knee in the cheap plastic laundromat chair. "You can't keep treating me like I'm about to die."

Sam watches his brother, how his body squirms like he's in pain and he gets this sort of wide-eyed, blank expression on his face, like maybe he's a little shocked about how bad it hurts.

He's heard it too many times to be shocked or appalled. "That's what you always say."

"Well. Am I dead?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "No."

"Then I mean what I say, right?"

"You've never been sick like this before, Dean."

They've promised each other that they won't have this conversation the hard way, with the code language and pride and embarrassment and denial, because they simply don't have time for it. But merely agreeing to openness and honesty apparently doesn't make all those barriers disappear. Dean's expression goes dark and his chest begins to hitch, and Sam can seem him riling himself up to lie his ass off about how he's been feeling, Sam can practically hear it before he says it: _I'm fine. _

"You're _not fine,_" Sam says before Dean can open his mouth, "We don't have time to talk about how _you're fine, _Dean, we need to talk about how to keep you from starving to death. We need to figure out what sort of creature we're dealing with."

Dean holds up his hands, surrendering. "_Okay_—but what about the hunt in Milwaukie?"

"The hunt in Milwaukie is a fucking _joke," _Sam barks. He can't _believe, _after last night, after all this shit, that his brother would even ask. "The ghost hasn't even killed anybody."

"Then why—"

"So you could get this hunting shit out of your system!"

Dean falls back in his chair with a monumental sign and scrubs his hands over his face. "Sam. You gotta quit yelling at me."

Not the reaction Sam was expecting. "What?"

"It's like a stress ball, okay?" Dean says with a little laugh, putting his hand on his heart. "And it feels like someone is squeezing the shit out of it. Only it's like… getting bigger? It's the weirdest fucking feeling. Most of the time I can't even tell if it's—" He stops midsentence, brows knitting in pain.

"Dean, what…?"

Dean shakes his head, holds out his arm to keep Sam from lunging at him.

"Dean—"

"Sam. Just…" Dean holds up a one second finger and bows his head while Sam looks on helplessly. They sit for a minute that way, Dean holding his breath, Sam holding his breath, washers whirring and sloshing behind them.

Gradually his brother starts breathing again, little sips at first, then finally an explosive sigh.

"Man," he mutters.

"Tell me what the fuck is wrong, Dean."

"The murmur's ridiculous. It's like the beat of the Banana Boat song or something."

Sam raises his eyebrow; Dean waves his hand dismissively. "I can't explain it, dude—here." He takes Sam's hand and presses it against his chest.

Sam is reminded of a Thanksgiving at Jessica's parents, the awkward, icky feeling he'd gotten when Jessica's massively pregnant sister had randomly caught his arm and said, "He's kicking! Feel!"

But he recognizes that this is a rare moment for Dean, and almost unheard of moment, a moment that'll probably never occur again in any form and so he tries to concentrate on the uneven rhythm of his brother's heartbeat. It's disgusting, there's no better word for it, how his heart knocks haphazardly against his rib cage, like a prisoner running a coffee cup along the bars of his cell.

"_Daylight come and me wan go home_," Dean sings with a smile.

Sam wrestles his hand away, fight goddamn tears again. "_Not _fucking funny—"

"Wait," Dean snatches his hand again, holds it to his sickly beating heart, and Sam squirms because goddamn it, he doesn't want to feel it, because it sounds like any minute it's gonna stop.

"Sam, just _cool it _for a minute, okay? Do you feel it?"

"Yeah," Sam replies, snorting back his tears. "I can fucking feel it, now let me go."

"Yell at me," Dean says.

"What?"

"Fucking yell at me. Get pissed. Seriously. Just do it, okay? Just do it."

"YOU'RE BEING FUCKING CREEPY," Sam yells.

And then he feels it. Dean's heartbeat stops, and then something bucks, or maybe bubbles, or maybe… writhes? Under his hand. And then nothing. And then the heart starts beating again.

Sam digs his thumb into the spot over Dean's chest. "What the fuck, Dean? What the fuck?"

"Ow, Sam. Stop."

"What the fuck _was_ that?"

"I don't know. But it only happens when you get pissed. Or when I get pissed. Or when _someone _gets pissed."

"Jesus Christ, Dean."

"I'm not trying to freak you out, okay? I'm trying to prove a point here."

"What _point?_"

"Doesn't matter what my heart's doing, or how bad it fucking hurts, okay? I ain't dying. Something's keeping me alive—something unnatural."

Sam opens his mouth to speak, but Dean charges over him: "And we'll deal with that. Just not right now. Right now you're exhausted, and we got some sorta monster or spirit fucking with your head. So I'm _begging _you—let's worry about me later. Cause I'm telling you—my heart can wait. I ain't dying. You gotta forget about that, for now."

Sam is too overwhelmed to respond but he doesn't cry, doesn't know if he has any cry left in him, but suddenly his head hurts so bad he can scarcely see what's in front of him. He turns away from Dean, rests his head on the laundromat counter and just breathes. He feels his brother's hand on the small of his back, petting, comforting, like Sam should be doing, if only he weren't such a baby, but jesus Christ, he can feel muscles in Dean's arms—what's left of the muscle, anyway—twitching, pulsing, vibrating against his back. Another seizure of muscle spasms is on the way.

"It's happening again, Dean."

"I know, Sammy. That's why you gotta believe me. Cause we have bigger things to worry about and not a lot of time."

"I can't go through that again, god, Dean, I can't see you like that again_—_"

"Hey," Dean says, laughing again, goddamn him, "If I can get through it, you sure as hell can too. Now stop. We got a couple hours, max, okay? So let's keep it together, huh? Let's make a plan."

Sam nods. And he keeps it together. They watch their laundry dry, paw around in Dad's journal, pull out the laptop and sift around on the internet and find absolutely nothing, but Sam keeps it together.

As far as plans, though, they don't make it much passed "find a motel room" and "go to the bank, cash in quarters for cash" because Dean's pain grips him a little faster than expected, and he has trouble concentrating, so Sam digs around in the Impala's glovebox until he finds a few of ancient over-the-counter sleeping pills and a half-disintegrated Tylenol with codeine, all of which he feeds to his brother, praying silently that maybe Dean will be able to sleep through the worst of the spasms.

Sam pulls their clothes out of the dryer still damp, and carries his brother to the car.

Just like that, Sam is alone again. But he tries to stay positive—they have the money to hole up somewhere now, somewhere to make safe, if only for a little while, doorways and window sills to salt so that maybe Sam can get some honest-to-god sleep.

But most importantly he has his brother's permission to stop fretting about the possibility of his death. And that's something, something big.

Dean drifts, then falls into a fitful sleep, but he doesn't wake up once when Sam pulls into their parking space and lifts him from the car, only cracks a sluggish eyelid when Sam slips in a greasy puddle and knocks his brother's head against the Impala's side mirror. He's all ribs and vertebrae and skin in Sam's arms, muscles trembling in rhythm with frantic, uneven _thud thud thud _of his heart.

An apple-shaped woman with breasts like sandbags is leaning in the doorway of a neighboring room, blowing torrents of cigarette smoke at the sky. Sam nods politely in her direction and she stares unabashedly, expression unchanging.

It's not until Sam reaches the door, huffing and puffing, that he realizes he forgot to unlock it first. He fumbles on the door step for a minute, Dean's limbs flopping lifelessly every which way.

"Come on, Dean," Sam mutters, "help me out here."

"Hey," the woman says, "Need help?"

"Um," Sam says. At first he thinks the woman wants him to hand his brother over to her like a bag of groceries, and the idea makes him sick, but then she gestures toward the keyring dangling from his pointer finger.

"Oh, would you?" Sam says as she takes the key. "Thanks."

Something tingles up Sam's back as he settles his brother on the bed. The woman is still behind him, standing in the doorway, watching. But it's not her, there's something else…

"He okay?" She says. "Looks like he been poisoned."

"He's just drunk." Sam crosses the room in two strides and shuts the door in her face. He locks all the locks, then stands there with his hand still on the doorknob, listening, just listening. He hears nothing but Dean's gulping breaths and the rustle of bedding as the pain makes his brother increasingly restless.

Sam supposes he should second guess himself, especially considering the very loose grip he's had on reality lately, but that's not the way he was raised, and he knows something's there, and so pulling his gun from his waistband he spins, points it between the eyes of the person lurking up behind him.

It's the kid from Hermiston, Blazers jersey and all.

:::::

To be continued…

The song Dean was slaughtering is "Forever My Friend," by Ray LaMontagne, which my roommate has been playing on repeat for days and days AND WILL NOT STOP. At least the lyrics fit with the fic—and it's totally something Sam would listen to.


	7. Chapter 7

Note: I broke my computer, lost this chapter, and had to rewrite it, which is why I took so long to update. But now the story is COMPLETE. All of it.

I dedicate the rest of this story to my girl Chiiyo86, my support system and shoulder to cry on as I slogged my way through this fic. She is a goddess, plain and simple.

**Chapter 7 **

Take him home. Put him to bed. Pray.

That's what they told Sam, the day he walked into Dean's hospital room and all the machines were gone, IVs gone, feeding tube gone and it was just Dean, sitting up in bed, dressed in scrubs with bare feet dangling, clutching a garbage bag of his swamp-smelling clothes.

And then they were standing under an awning in the rain, Sam with a fistful of prescriptions they had no money to fill, Dean silent and shivering in a wheelchair.

Sam took his brother to a motel. Put him to bed. Prayed.

OOOO

_Something tingles up Sam's back as he settles his brother on the bed. The woman is still behind him, standing in the doorway, watching. But it's not her, there's something else…_

"_He okay?" She says. "Looks like he been poisoned."_

"_He's just drunk." Sam crosses the room in two strides and shuts the door in her face. He locks all the locks, then stands there with his hand still on the doorknob, listening, just listening. He hears nothing but Dean's gulping breaths and the rustle of bedding as the pain makes his brother increasingly restless._

_Sam supposes he should second guess himself, especially considering the very loose grip he's had on reality lately, but that's not the way he was raised, and he knows something's there, and so pulling his gun from his waistband he spins, points it between the eyes of the person lurking up behind him._

_It's the kid from Hermiston, Blazers jersey and all._

"What the fuck?" Sam lowers the gun for a moment, at first just irritated that this kid is bothering him again, but then he remembers _he knew my name _and _how the fuck did he get in here_ and robotically his arm reaches out for a handful of the Blazers jersey and he swings the kid around and pushes him against the front door, wedging him tightly between it and his gun, and the kid says "Sam, wait!" and "oof!" as his lower back connects with the doorknob.

Sam spits out a few bars of his favorite exorcism.

"I don't--I don't speak Latin."

Sam stows the gun, frees a silver dagger from his sock and presses the blade into the meat of the kid's neck, drawing blood.

"Sam, please—"

"What are you?"

"Sam--"

"_What the fuck are you? _You have till the count of three before I shove this through your throat, you understand? One."

The kid looks meaningfully down his nose at the knife; Sam eases up, just a little, just enough for the boy to choke: "'alm down."

"Two."

"Man…. high strung."

"Three--"

"OKAY!" The kid shrinks back, choking against the blade. "I came to apologize. To help."

He tries to shimmy passed the gun; Sam shoves him back in place with enough force to rattle the walls. "_Bullshit_. You knew my name."

"Yes, Sam, but—"

"You put me in that delusion."

"No—"

"The fuck you didn't!"

"Please."

Sam leans in nose-to-nose with the kid, and the kid lifts his chin up and away, presses his cheek against the door and squeezes his eyes closed like Sam is some kind of huffing beast about to chew a hole in his face. He whimpers something over and over, maybe curses or maybe prayers but Sam doesn't bother to listen, all he cares about is evidence, some sign of what kind of monster he's dealing with.

But the kid just looks like… a kid. An awkward and funny-looking kid. Brown hair, older than Sam first thought, maybe twenty or twenty-one. Face spotted with tears and acne and sporadic hints of facial hair.

"_Homo sapiens_, born and bred, dude," he squeaks, "I swear. And I won't even go near you brother, okay? I won't even go _near _him."

Sam steps back, points the gun at the table by the window. "Sit."

"Put the weapons away?"

"Sit the fuck down."

The kid sits.

Sam arranges a chair between the kid and Dean. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he must look like a monster, bloody knife in one hand, gun in the other, and what if this is all just another head trip?

He looks to his brother, who's gleaming under a film of perspiration, his head lolling back and forth on the pillow, lips moving in delirious whispers.

He's fucking _gone_, Sam's knows he's gone, but he asks anyway: "Dean?"

"You're not hallucinating, Sam," the kid says behind him. "I know you'd rather hear it from him, but I'm real."

Sam's head is beginning to ache, not pounding but like fingers digging into the crown of his head. Outside rain is falling; he can hear sharp, speeding raindrops glancing off the Impala.

"Just tell me what you want."

"When…" With the hem of his jersey the kid dabs at the blood on his neck. Sweat drops down his temples. "When I… when you…"

And then with a sob he just kind of falls apart, hands fluttering so bad he can't wipe the moisture from his face, and Sam can't help it—his mind flashes to the slack-jawed, disappointed stare of the kid's sister, the trembly-lipped faux-confidence of the kid at the Unicorn Villa, the pharmacist with the snot spilling out of his nose, red, red eyes begging Sam _please, please don't kill me. _

He lowers the gun.

"Stop crying," he orders. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

The kid wipes recklessly at his eyes, sniffling. "She's not really my sister. I don't even know the bitch."

"What?"

"I didn't give a shit about the money, I was just trying to scare you."

Sam opens his mouth to say_ how do you my name_?

"_Because_, Sam, don't you get it? I was _sent _here."

Sam raises the gun again, rechecks his aim. "You're reading my thoughts."

The kid's eyes grow wide. "Am not."

"One."

"You're fucking crazy!"

"Two."

"Fine! Fine, maybe I'm a little psychic."

"A little?"

"Okay, maybe a lot. But I'm not doing this to you, I swear to fucking God. Last night? I don't know what the fuck that was, okay? It wasn't me."

"Bull_shit_." Sam stands over the kid, because losing his mind or not, the one thing he can still do is _tower._ "The truth. Now."

"Dean," the kid says, and Sam flinches at the sound of his brother's name. "I'm here about Dean."

"What about him?"

"You should—we should. Something. It's _cruel_. He wishes he were dead. Sam, you have no idea how bad it's gotten."

Sam looks over his shoulder at his brother. Dean's back arches, lips parting with a noiseless moan.

"You're lying."

"No."

"You sense it?"

"Of course I sense it. Fucking _John Edward _could sense it. He wants to die, he's _going _to die if you don't let me help."

Sam backs up, can't tower over the kid anymore because it's like his body deflates down to half its size, and he sinks into the chair with a sudden and overwhelming despair, something much more painful than the varying degrees of hopelessness he's been living in lately. He fucking _knows _Dean is suffering, has known it for a long time, but to hear someone else acknowledge it, to know that despite Dean's don't-worry-about-me song and dance he really _is _giving up and his pain can be sensed on the same frequency as a fucking spirit or demon—suddenly he wants to kill the kid and Dean and himself and just be done with it, this increasingly futile and _pointless _struggle.

"I can relieve his pain for a little while," the kid says, "one of my parlor tricks."

"You can stay the fuck away from him."

"Okay."

Sam just sits for a moment, hunched, raking his fingers through his bangs. Trying to breathe. Staring at the geometric pattern on the carpet. Following the lines.

"You didn't come here out of the goodness of your heart," he says.

"His doctors have been trying to find you," the kid says tentatively. "They want you to bring Dean back to the hospital. They've made progress. They think they can cure him."

With his eyes Sam traces the lines of a triangle on the carpet, point-to-point, maybe five or six times. Behind him, Dean mutter-sighs in his delirium. Sam looks at the kid. Blinks.

"How the fuck do you know about any of that?"

"They sent me here to bring him back."

"Quit lying to me."

"I'm not."

"Why the fuck would they send a little kid?"

The kid looks offended. "I'm probably no more than a year or two young--"

"--One."

"I don't know! Because I'm broke and stupid and willing to travel?"

"Two."

"If I tell you the truth, you're going to shoot me."

"Maybe I'll shoot you anyway. DON'T"-- Sam adds when the kid's face starts to crumble-- "Don't start. No crying. Just. Tell me."

The kid nods, sniffling a little. "There's a substance in Dean's body. Something the doctors couldn't identify."

"I know that. So what?"

"Can I?" The kid gestures at his jeans pocket, and when Sam nods _okay _he pulls out a wad of bills, six twenties and a five.

The money Sam stole from the Unicorn Villa. The money that disappeared.

"How the fuck did you…?"

The kid smiles wetly. "You're a heavy sleeper."

Jesus. Sam's almost glad Dean's not coherent enough to hear this—he'd laugh himself to death. He looks at the money, down at his gun, up at the kid, who seems to be waiting on him like this is all supposed to make sense, like the mystery should suddenly click into place.

"So?" he says finally.

The kid tosses the money on the table. "The doctors weren't ever trying to make him better. They were trying to get his body to produce more of the substance."

Sam swallows. "Why?"

"Cause they're pretty sure that's what's keeping him alive," the kid looks wearily over at Dean, "and, well. If it had the same effect on others… that'd be a hell of a scientific breakthrough, wouldn't it?"

The note from the lowly GP flashes in Sam's mind. _Harvest. _

"Like a fucking dairy cow," the kid confirms.

"If you're telling the truth," Sam takes a breath. "why'd they let us go? Why hire some punk to follow us?"

The look on Sam's face must being glowing with rage and certain death, because the kid shrinks away, throwing up his arms in surrender.

"I was just a meter-reader, Sam, okay? All I knew was I was supposed to follow you. Do whatever I could to scare you, make you panic. After you robbed that pregnant bitch, I saw my chance. So I put on a show for you in Hermiston." The kid looks down at his lap with guilt that looks genuine enough. "Never met a man so afraid of his own name. Made my job real easy."

Sam says nothing. He wants to ask _why why why. B_ut he already knows the answer. _Yell at me, Sam. Get pissed. _Dean's heart stopping. The repulsive movement in his chest.

"You're saying that's what makes his body produce more of it," Sam says flatly. "Panic. Anger. Fear?"

"Kinda," the kid says, "They thought maybe it had something to do with hormones and adrenaline? Except they couldn't replicate it with supplements. They tortured your brother for weeks and his body wouldn't cooperate. But when Dean was reacting to you, Sam? He'd start pumping that shit out like a fuckin' wet nurse_._"

Sam just nods because really, what the fuck is there to say? It doesn't surprise him one bit that this is all his fault. Of course it is. He thinks of Dean, clutching Sam's hand to his heart, begging him to listen. He remembers every harsh word he's barked at his brother since this whole thing began. Every time he accused Dean of giving up, of not giving a shit, every time he shoved or dragged him because he wasn't walking fast enough, every time he yelled, every time he screamed, every time he towered over Dean's bed and told Dean to stop complaining about being stuck in the hospital _BECAUSE IT'S BETTER THAN BEING FUCKING DEAD, ISN'T IT DEAN? FUCKING ISN'T IT? _

He thinks about all the times he lay awake all night trying not to fantasize about what he would to do after Dean died.

Cause he'd had plans, alright. Nothing solid, just childish daydreams about running off into the sunset and being free and drunk and self-destructive and carrying his tragic past and the pain of his brother's death on his person and in his eyes like a fucking gold metal and eventually letting it eat him alive. Daydreams about all the women he'd have in his bed, his permanent bed, women who would see his pain and find it mysterious and sexy and lean into his ear and whisper with swollen, fucked-out lips _I'm so sorry about your brother _and one day he'd find one that wasn't a vapid whore and he'd marry her and she'd take care of him in more ways than Dean ever did and--

He knew. He always knew the doctors weren't trying to fix him and Dean probably knew it too but Sam's anger was _hurting him, feel my heart you gotta quit yelling at me, Sammy_. _Okay, Sammy. Okay. _Sam didn't understand then, and jesus Christ did it make him angry, how easily Dean gave up, how he always let Sam have his way, how the angrier Sam got and the more Sam yelled Dean would just seem to get smaller and smaller, more and more exhausted, it was because—

"…you were killing him," the kid concludes.

Yes. Killing him.

But surely this is all bullshit, just another in a lifetime of supernatural practical jokes. Sam's first instinct is to accuse the kid of lying, like maybe the kid can just make it untrue by taking it back. But it's true. Sam knows.

And all he can do is sit and stare.

"This?" The kid thumbs at Dean, still sweating and whimpering obliviously on the bed in the corner. "This is a shut down. There's so much now that it's poisoning him. It has to stop, Sam, or he's going to die. Can I show you?"

The boy inches his way over to Dean, hands in the air. Sam tracks his movement with the gun, but he permits the kid sit on the bed next to his brother, near his head. He joins them, settling in the space between Dean's chest and drawn-up knees.

"I'm not gonna hurt him, okay? I'm just gonna…" He lifts Dean's shirt to reveal the garden of black bruises striping his right side. "How you think he got this?"

"He said he fell," Sam croaks. "Out of the car, when I was out of my mind yelling at those cops. I don't know—maybe I pulled him out."

"Nah," the kid says. "They aren't bruises. It's pooling. See?" He presses his thumb into Dean's skin. Dean lets out a wail, which Sam ignores because_ holy shit, _the bruises start to swirl, shimmering black and wet just below the skin.

"Oh my god," Sam says, swallowing back the urge to puke.

"You gotta let me help him," the kid says, "_Please."_

The sky outside explodes in thunder, window flashing white with a bolt of lightening, like Sam and the kid are in some really terrible horror movie, rain pounding on the roof, pouring down, pouring down with the rhythm of a thousand irregular heartbeats.

The kid takes Dean's head into his lap. Dean is alternating between a low whine and distressed, breathy muttering. His hand flies out and find's Sam's, his eyes flash open and they're saying _Sam, please._

"It's okay," Sam says, more to himself than anything. "It's okay."

"It's over, Dean," the kid says, swiping his thumb over Dean's moist forehead. "Pain's over. Chill. It's gone, okay? It's gone."

With a sigh Dean goes limp. The boy pushes him up sitting and stuffs him into Sam's arms. Dean's head falls on his shoulder, body a limp sack of bones, burning face pressed against Sam's neck, panting wet and labored into the underside of Sam's chin.

"Thank you," Sam whispers. "Thank you."

"Don't worry," the kid says. "This is all almost over."

Slowly Dean quiets, settling down like a fussing baby until his breathing is deep and even. Since the accident, whether sedated, asleep, fatigued, half dead, Dean's muscles have ceaselessly danced with tremors. But now Sam has him close and his body is still. And that's what Sam feels, too. Stillness. Peace for the first time in weeks, maybe months. Maybe ever.

Except inside somewhere something is definitely stirring, a voice knocking at the door and calling something through heavy wood but he can't exactly hear it though he knows there's something… no. Yes. There's something off about this whole thing. Something that doesn't quite--

"Why?" He says, though he's not sure what he wants to know. Maybe the kid can read his mind. Figure it out. Sam hopes so. He holds Dean tighter. Dean smells like a box of crayons. "Why are you helping us? What do you care?"

Sam's face is hidden in Dean's hair, but he hears the boy's shirt rustle as he moves. "About that."

"What?" Sam looks up, finds that there's something new in the boy's eyes. Something he can't quite put his finger on, except it's very clear that he's no longer afraid.

"Depends on what you mean by 'care.'" The boy smiles. "I care the same way _you_ care. Which is to say, I only care about how his suffering effects _me_."

"What… what is that supposed to mean?"

"You know _exactly _what it means, Sam. Don't play stupid. I'm talking about the childish idea that you're entitled to something more. That you have some sort of right to be something other than miserable. That fairness is a natural order that should be fought for. You must have gotten that idea from your father. Always chasing away his own pain at the expensive of those who depended on him. He killed me once too, you know."

The kid reaches out, brushes a finger lightly against Dean's cheek.

Licks his lips.

Sam pulls Dean away, to the foot of the bed, back hovering over dead space. Cold. Outside the rain beats down, beats down, beats down.

"I leave a residue, see. I let you and your brother run off with it? I'll be feeling it the whole rest of my life." The kid's eyes fix on Dean, desirous and _hungry, _and then they roll with pleasure_. _"So _ripe. _ Looks like he been poisoned."

Words stick in Sam's throat. He can feel himself mute and staring and frightened and cornered and clutching Dean like a security blanket, but he can't make himself fucking move, or speak, or do anything, though inside he's screaming _who? Who the fuck are you?"_

The kid's eyes flicker and just like that his face is undulating, eyes hollow and triangular, teeth pointed and slobbering. "I'll give you a hint, Sam. 'Steals naughty children from their homes. Take them to his dirty den. And they are never seen again."

Sam doesn't give himself time to think; one hand is still holding Dean and the other is fumbling for the gun.

And then the back of the kid's head explodes. Brain matter sprays on the nightstand, on the headboard, on the wall behind them, flesh and red and black and clotted. The body falls to the floor with a _plop _no more dramatic than the sound of raw chicken smacking against linoleum.

Dean pulls away from Sam with a start, color flushing his face. He looks down at the body, back up at Sam. "Sam? What the fuck did you do? Who is that? What the fuck did you do?"

"Psychic messenger boy _my ass_." Sam shoots again; the kid's body jumps, then goes still. "It's the Rawhead."

**::::**

You get two chapters for the price of one today, but I'd love it if you reviewed both *bats eyelashes*


	8. Chapter 8

**WARNING: I posted two chapters today, so be sure to read Chapter 7 first!**

**Chapter 8**

"The Rawhead's dead, Sam. We killed it."

"Yep." Sam grunts as he pulls the boy off the floor and into the chair. The kid is thin and short but he weighs an inhuman ton. "Can you walk, Dean?"

Dean bristles. "Of course I can walk."

Sam's eyes dart around the motel room until he finds what he needs. "Here. Take the knife, cut the cords off the blinds. Hurry up."

Dean looks at the knife and at his brother like they're both completely insane. "What the fuck, Sam? The kid doesn't have any _brains_."

There isn't time for this. Punching the kid in his already squishy face, just for a good measure, Sam works quickly, using the knife to saw at the blind cords until they pull free. Dean just watches, fingers pressed into his heart.

Sam kneels on the floor behind the dead kid, starts securing him to the chair. He keeps Dean in the corner of his eye. "Is it coming back?"

"Huh?" Dean says, arm falling to his side.

"The pain. Is it coming back?"

"No. Yeah."

"You think you can make it out to the car, get the tasers?"

"You gonna tell me why the fuck you think this dead kid is a Rawhead?"

"Nevermind." Sam ties a final knot. He digs a motel-issue hairdryer out of the linen closet, turns the taps in the bathtub on full blast and starts dragging the kid to the bathroom. The kid seems to be getting heavier, each pull more difficult than the last.

"You gonna give him a bath? You know a hairdryer's not gonna do nothing but blow the circuit."

Sam stops dead. "You think this is fucking joke, Dean?"

Dean's eyes are round and childish. He shakes his head almost imperceptibly. Sam can see that the color is draining quickly from his face, but he rises stiffly from the bed, reaching for the other end of the chair.

"No," Sam says sternly, "Just lay down."

"I feel great."

"Sure you do." The boy's shoe catches on the bed frame, Sam growls as he tugs him free. "It's gonna wear off, and then it's gonna be worse. Save your strength."

"Sam what the fuck makes you think…?"

Sam drops the kid for a moment, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "He told me. _Rawhead and Bloody Bones, steals naughty children from their homes, takes them to his dirty den—" _

"—_and they are never seen again._" Dean finishes. "So what? He eats children. We're not children."

"_They,_ Dean, not 'he.'" Sam gives the boy a kick to make sure he's still dead and flops on the bed next to his brother. "The lore on Rawheads is all over the place. Sometimes Rawhead and Bloody Bones is a creature that steals bad children and drowns them. Sometimes he rides through small towns to punish the wicked. In some stories, a witch creates a monster out of animal remains and sends it to enact revenge on her enemies. But I have a theory."

Dean totters to the window and looks out through the blinds. Rain is flooding down the windows. The world outside is a blur.

"Of course you do," he says. "Let's hear it."

"Most of the lore says that Rawhead and Bloody Bones is the same entity. But I think he can split himself in two. Like two teenage kids. A girl and her unborn child--"

"--Or two cops," Dean raises an eyebrow. "You're shitting me."

Sam shakes his head. "All the stories have one thing in common-- Rawhead and Bloody Bones is a creature of panic and hysteria. That would explain why they lock their children up before they eat them, torture and scare the shit out of them. Because what they're really feeding on is _fear_. We're the next course. He's had us marinating. Fattening us up." Suddenly Sam can't meet his brother's eyes. "Using me to fatten you up."

Dean clears his throat. "Sam--"

"--Later, Dean." Sam commences dragging the kid toward the bathroom. "I think he likes to bring his victims up and down, give them a last burst of fear before he feeds, like adding salt and pepper to a fucking pork chop. And I bet you anything"—with a massive groan Sam pulls the kid into the bathroom—"that as soon as I get near the tub he's going to—"

Brainless and all, the kid roars to life, hair falling away to reveal a pocked, bleeding scalp oozing with knuckle-sized boils. His mouth stretches as wide as Sam's shoulders, drooling from double rows of twinkling teeth. He lets out a roar and lunges at the restraints, which are already beginning to snap.

But Sam is ready. He kicks the monster square in the stomach, chair tipping over onto the edge of the bathtub and it only takes one good lift and a twist to dunk him into the water. The kid flails; in one quick motion Sam jams the plug into the outlet and throws the hairdryer in after him. The Rawhead sizzles, sputters, growls. The bathroom lights dim and flicker out.

Sam watches the body twitch and break down, disintegrating into soupy black tar until nothing's left but the kid's femurs, rising up out of the sludge like massive swizzle sticks.

"Thought so," Sam says. He can't resist brushing his palms together and giving Dean a smirk. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

"Does that mean it over?"

Sam shakes his head. "If I'm right, he's like a sea creature regrowing a tentacle. We're gonna have to figure out how to kill it… them… at the same time. Or he just keeps regenerating."

"Huh," Dean says rather indifferently.

"What, Dean?"

"Am I… what's gonna happen to me? When it's dead? You think I'll die?"

He asks it so matter-of-factly, like he's asking if fucking Matlock is on. Incredible anger bubbles up in Sam, he knows what the kid told him-- about Dean wanting to die--was probably a lie but he can't help himself, everything turns red.

"I don't know," he spits, "But I guess either way you won't really give a shit, will you?"

"I was just asking."

Sam scowls at the floor.

Dean clears his throat. "Cause I been thinking—and don't freak out, Sammy, but I been thinking about this."

"What?"

"Well." Dean folds his hands in is lap, deliberately avoiding Sam's eyes. "I know this hasn't been fun for you. But. It hasn't been fun for me either."

"No shit," Sam say spits, like that's going to stop what Dean's about to say next, cause he doesn't want to hear what Dean's about to say, _holy fuck_ he doesn't want to hear what Dean's about to say.

"I can't eat," Dean begins, "Can't breathe. Can barely walk. I dunno if you've noticed, but I don't see very well anymore, either."

Sam swallows. He's noticed.

"And it hurts like a bitch," Dean makes a casual gesture, throwing up one hand in hopelessness, "All the time, you know? So it's like, what's the point?"

"I'm not having this conversation with you."

Dean nods in understanding. "Well I'm having it with you. Remember that jacket you had when you were a kid? The one with the Tasmanian Devil on it? Remember when you puked on it, and I tried to get the stains out with bleach—"

"—Are you really about to compare yourself with some shitty old jacket? What the hell is wrong with you?"

Dean shrugs. "Well? You still seem to like having me around, but I'm ruined, Sammy. And it's pointless. And irrational. And stup—" He stops, folding over himself.

"Dean?"

Dean groans, low and controlled. When he speaks again his voice is high, almost hysterical. "This is exactly what I'm fucking talking about, Sammy. I can't _do_ this kinda pain for the rest of my life."

"Maybe it'll get better, Dean." Sam says, rather desperately. "Before all this shit happened-- before I let them test you-- you were getting better."

"I was not."

"You _were_!"

Dean looks up at him with narrowed eyes. "Why do you have to be so fucking stupid? Why can't you stop clinging to this ridiculous fucking guilt and just _let me go?_"

For a long moment they stare at one another. Slowly, very slowly, Sam begins to ease himself off the bed. "Dean?"

"Come on, Sammy. Stop pretending like you don't want me dead. You lay in bed at night and fucking _pray _for it."

"I've always prayed that you'd get well."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Not sick, dead, in a nursing home somewhere. Doesn't really matter all that much to you. You'd carve me up like a goddamn Easter ham if someone told you it'd make me better or dead. One or the other, right Sammy? If you didn't have to drown in guilt, you'd smile while I _screamed_. Whatever solved the problem."

"That--that's not--"

"Oh yeah, it is, Sammy, it is true. Admit it. You don't care about me. All you really ever wanted was your life back."

"Where's my brother?"

"I'm your brother_._"

"No."

Dean smiles, lifts his shirt. The black matter looks like it's boiling now, bubbles rising and exploding underneath his skin. Licking his lips, he touches them tenderly, looking down at the mess like a mother might look at a newborn. "He's overdone, Sam. He's ready. Almost _too_ ripe. Good as dead. Let us take him. Let us take him and you can live. Stop pretending this isn't what you want."

Sam inches backward, hand along the wall to guide him, stumbling when he reaches the threshold of the bathroom door. "Where's my fucking brother?"

"If you don't let us have him, Sam, he'll linger for _weeks_. He'll scream in pain until he chokes on the blood of his own shredded throat. His body will liquefy. He'll be pissing and shitting his insides—"

Sam has heard enough. He turns and runs. Runs to the Impala, praying.

Praying.

He can hear Dean--the Rawhead, _the fucking Rawhead--_lopping up behind him. He stops at the front door, which is _locked, _goddamn it, fumbles with the doorknob, throws the door open--

The gigantic woman from next door looms in the doorway, only her teeth have grown two sizes too big and her jaw is dislocated from the rest of her face and hangs propped on her double chin in an alien grin, saliva running down her neck and pooling on the shelves of her breasts. Her skin is falling off in pieces that _splat _against the wet pavement, exposing grey, porous bones oozing with quivering blobs of congealing blood.

Bloody bones.

Sam feels Dean's hand around his shoulders.

Rearing back against them he kicks out at the woman, who flies backward into the rain with a gurgling roar.

And Sam runs right over her, his sneakers slipping and sliding on the drool from her jaw, and Dean's arm is now around his neck; he folds in half, throwing Dean over his shoulder and onto the ground, and then he runs. It's raining so hard now it's like taking a luke warm shower and through the blackness he can barely see the Impala.

Nothing can get in. Not since Jericho. Dean made sure of that.

He runs to the driver's side window and whispering a silent apology uses the butt of his gun to smash in the window. He dives in, flipping quickly on his back, aiming out the window and up at the sky.

Dean and the fat woman stop just outside the car, hissing, drooling, clawing, rocking at her sides.

Sam aims, and then he says a prayer, and then he shoots.

The power line above them snaps free and lands on the hood of the Impala.

In the pouring rain Dean and the fat woman dance together in jerking, manic motions, limbs tangling, heads bobbing almost comically, the live wire flipping around them like a gleeful snake, and then the woman beings to disintegrate, turning black and oozing out of her own skin. It's not long before she's a puddle.

And Dean drops.

"FUCK!" Sam shrieks. Above him something explodes in a shower of sparks that lights up Dean's wet-and-purple face and the wire goes dead, and Dean is _dead, _holy fucking shit _he's dead,_ and Sam had thought his real body had been hiding somewhere but it wasn't, what's slumped there is Dean's body, his only body, probably destroyed and probably forever--

"Oh fuck, oh no, Dean, fuck, Dean, no, fuck, fuck fuck--" Sam opens the door and falls out of the car, and it's raining so hard he can't keep his eyes all the way open and reaches out for the blur that's shaped like his brother, the body is warm and still twitching.

Not twitching.

Heaving.

Sam holds his brother by the side of the head to look into his eyes, see if there's any life in his eyes, and his brother pukes something black down the front of his shirt, black with silvery flecks and it's hot and thick and oozing, it's _Rawhead, _he's throwing up Rawhead, and it's so goddamn wet and water's coming down so hard that it rinses away almost as soon as it hits so Sam lets his brother throw up, and throw up, and throw up, and it seems like it's never going to end.

He doesn't know how long they kneel there in the rain, he just knows that the black stuff keeps coming and coming and coming, and when it's finally over Dean falls limp in his arms.

:::::

To be concluded…

One more chapter and that's ALL SHE WROTE. There will be more stories in this verse, though. Assuming anyone wants to read more. Which is probably a big assumption. *runs and hides*

Speaking of… the final chapter is finished and I will only be evilly withholding it from you until Friday. :D

*does the "Please Review" dance*

Oh, and I have a rec! Read Wheelchair Detective by Briannon. It's delightful. The h/c isn't silly and melodramatic and overdone like _some _fic out there *COUGH this one COUGH*, but Dean is temporarily in a wheelchair and he hurts a bit and the plot is really fun and interesting. There are also Interesting Female Characters, which is a rarity.


	9. Chapter 9 The End

**A/N: **I borrowed parts of the lore in this and previous chapters from a retelling of Rawhead and Bloody Bones by S. E. Schlosser, which you can find with a very simple google search. Mr. or Mrs. Schlosser, your lore was used for recreational purposes only. No profit being made, no copyright infringement intended. DISCLAIMED!

**Chapter 9 **

Dad always used to use the expression _what the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. _

Sam assumed it was just part of his father's God complex, because normally he'd say it when Sam was crying over a deflated basketball or skinned knee, or when he sent one of them to bed without dinner, or occasionally right before he drove a steak through something's heart.

But sometimes Dad would use it in a way that didn't make sense. Like when they'd kill something that hoarded treasures, enough riches to keep them going for months. Dad would hold up their spoils and smile and say _what the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away, boys._

Sam understands what it means now, though his father was probably using the wrong adage, maybe he meant _when God shuts a door he opens a window _or _all's well that ends well _or maybe he just meant _what the Lord taketh away the Lord giveth _but the point was this:

Sometimes shit that sucks? Sucks for a reason.

Dean falls limp in Sam's arms and begins to breathe, wet and wheezy on inhale and damp and crackling coughing on exhale, but he breathes, holy-god-in-heaven-christ he breathes.

His clothes are dust; burnt to a crisp that mixes with rain and forms a black paste that slides off his skin and into the puddle of creature beneath their knees. Sam wipes at Dean's arms, helps the clothes come free, and he looks at his brother's chest and there are no burns, no more black bruising. His skin is white and scarred and his ribs practically burst from the skin with each breath, but his heart is beating lethargically and the infection--the Rawhead-- appears to be gone.

Sam hefts his brother into the car and they drive off into the raining night and the water pours into the broken window and stings at Sam's face but he doesn't care because Rawhead slop and his very own tantrums might have been slowly killing his brother, but they also saved him from dying of electric shock. Twice. And if that wasn't a shining, senseless miracle smack dab in the middle of hell on earth, well, Sam doesn't know what else to call it.

Except maybe _what the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. _

**OOOO**

But then there's the bigger question, which is whether or not Dean is still Dean. Whether or not Dean _has _been Dean.

Dean sleeps for three days and Sam doesn't sleep at all. Instead he drinks coffee and wonders if maybe he's been dragging around a monster these last few weeks. Helping the monster walk. Fluffing the monster's pillows. Slapping the monster on the wrist for trying to slurp ketchup straight out of the bottle.

Then he remembers the kid brushing his thumb over Dean's forehead and saying _it's over, it's gone._

_You_ are over. _You _are gone.

Dean sleeps for three days and Sam drinks coffee and stares out the window. He researches for a little while, but then his laptop sits open and untouched for hours and he doesn't read or sleep or eat. He sits at the window and drinks coffee and tries not to think about the word _coma _and asks God to please, _please _make the fact that Dean is somehow alive mean he's not sick anymore.

He drinks coffee and stares out the window and has wild and elaborate daydreams about what they'll do if Dean is well. In many of these daydreams Dean is running, shooting, kicking down doors, beating the shit out of monsters. Smacking Sam upside his head. Pointing his sawed-off and yelling _Sammy, get down! _

In his mind's eye, Sam just watches. And smiles.

On the third day Sam glances at his brother and his eyes are open. There is no movement, no change in breathing, no rustling. His eyes are just open.

"Dean?"

Dean nods and his expression says _yeah. It's me._

And then he sleeps for three more days.

**OOOO**

Sam keeps moving. He can't bear the thought of driving back east so he goes west to a fishy-smelling ocean burg called Coos Bay, which he picks off a map because he thinks the dirty-sounding name might make Dean smile.

It doesn't.

Along the way he robs every vending machine he can find and supplements the income by sneaking out to dive bars at night while Dean is sleeping. He's no good at pool without Dean's backup and can't play poker by himself because it was always his job to suck royally at all varieties of the game—to provide distraction through exaggerated drunkenness, conspicuous card counting, reckless ante-upping.

So instead he tells women how beautiful they are and recites poetry about sunset eyes and cups their asses in one hand while lifting their wallets with the other and he can't get the taste of cherry lipgloss out of his mouth no matter how long or how hard he brushes his teeth. But it's better than the sticky weight of blood on his hands.

**OOOO**

The Oregon coast is cold and windy and smelly and it never stops raining but the waves are giant and uncompromising in a way that Sam finds comforting. Somehow.

He rents them a vacation shack that's separated from the beach by a massive dune that blocks the view of the water. It's a one-room building laid out exactly like a motel only decorated with driftwood mobiles and porcelain seagulls. He pulls up a chair next to Dean's bed and tells him everything that happened, though he's not sure how much Dean remembers or if he's even listening.

That night Dean develops a wet, relentless cough and can't lay down without choking. His mouth turns blue and he sleeps propped up against the wall, neck muscles straining every time he takes a breath.

Sam can't bring himself to ask Dean if he is dying.

**OOOO**

The cough goes away as quickly as it comes, though, and Dean's eyes stay open more and more but no matter what Sam says his brother will only stare, his expression sometimes growing watery and apologetic but other than that? Nothing.

One night the sky is clear and the breeze is warm, so he wraps Dean in layers and layers and drags him out to the beach. Sam hopes maybe the salty bite of the ocean air will do something to revive them both.

He sits his brother down on a piece of driftwood. Dean stares at the water and shivers, his eyelashes bunched together with moisture. The black sand is striped with withering tentacles of dried kelp, some of it twenty feet long. Sam thinks about starting a fire but it's too wet and windy, so instead he sits close to his brother, knees and shoulders touching.

"I don't know why it told me all that stuff about the hospital," Sam says, looking out across the waves. "Maybe it was just reading my mind. Maybe it just… I don't know. But all the stuff it told me—it's weird, Dean. I think he might have been telling the truth."

He slides his shoe off and squishes his toes in the freezing sand.

"I can't find anything on the facility," he continues. "No website, no address, no phone numbers. Nothing on the doctors. Like we imagined the whole fucking thing."

_Look for this place, _the lowly GP had said. _Just look._

Part of him hopes Dean will say something. Part of him hopes Dean won't.

"It's like they share a soul," Sam says, "Remember the story I told you about the witch who made the Rawhead out of animal remains?"

Dean blinks.

"Well, in some tellings, she sends the creature after a hunter who killed her pet hog. She reanimates the hog, and its skeleton makes itself into a new creature with stolen animal parts. A better creature. He steals the teeth of a panther. The claws of a bear. Then he goes after the hunter and scares him to death, uses fear and panic to eat him from the inside out. Then he steals the body for his own. Makes himself two. Rawhead and Bloody Bones. As long as one part is alive, the other part lives, too."

Maybe it's the brisk ocean air, or maybe it's the smell of dead fish, but Sam finds himself choking. Dean's eyes have left the ocean; now he's staring down at his own trembling hands.

"I think infecting people is like... insurance? If part of him is killed, he grows somewhere else. After I killed the kid, he moved on to you." He smirks sadly. "Maybe I was next. Who knows."

Sam tries to clear his throat. Tries to keep his voice from sounding so thin. "I found something. On Wikipedia, of all the stupid fucking places. 'In some tellings, he can take any form he chooses.' Whatever will make his victims fearful, Dean. That's how he grows stronger. You see what I'm saying? I'm the hunter. You're the teeth of the panther, the claws of the bear. Not the other way around. Not really."

Dean doesn't move. In the moonlight Sam can see the veins in his white face. The ocean roars endless and forever before them.

Sam tries again to clear his throat, but whatever's stuck there won't move.

"I don't know what to do, Dean," he says, and his voice is small and childlike.

Dean looks up from his hands. Up at Sam.

"Sam," he says, but it comes out as more of a gargle, so he clears his throat and says again, "Sam."

"Dean?"

"Sammy."

"You feeling... better?"

Dean coughs weakly, and Sam nods.

"Do you need…" he begins, but trails off. He has nothing to offer.

"Sammy—"

"Were you awake, Dean?"

Dean's mouth closes, opens again. "No. Yes. Sometimes."

"Did you mean the stuff you said? About wanting to die? About me wanting you to die?"

A beat goes by. "We didn't imagine it. The hospital."

"I know."

"We should... we should check this out."

Now it's Sam's turn to stare into the sand.

Dean's eyes fill with understanding. He looks away, back out into the ocean. He looks so, so small. His muscles, fatigued and probably permanently destroyed, are trembling in a helpless, palsied sort of way that makes Sam's heart burn.

"Do you think it's dead now?" Dean says. "I mean, do you think the part of him that was in me—do you think we got them both?"

"I think so," Sam says. "I hope so."

Dean looks down at his feet and wrings his hands a little, like he wants to ask a question but is scared to death of the answer he's going to get. It's the same look he would give their father when he was a kid, right before he'd ask _when are you gonna come back, Dad? _or_ will you be home in time for Sammy's birthday? _

The look he'd get right before Dad said something like _what the lord giveth, the lord taketh away._

"Sam."

"Yeah, Dean."

"What those doctors did to me…"

Sam can't hear that right now. He knows most of it but if he hears Dean say it out loud he'll break and spill and not even God himself will be able to repair it. "Dean, please—"

"I can't let this go."

"Yeah you can. You can."

"Stop saying that."

"Stop saying _what?_"

For a long time Dean is silent. He breathes, rubs his chest. "I don't have control over this. And neither do you."

"I know that."

"No," Dean says, "You don't. I know you don't want me to die. I _know _that. But you're still tearing yourself apart waiting for things to change."

"You want me to give up?"

"Yes."

"Well I won't."

"I might be like this _forever, _Sam,and you need to… we need to…"

He stops, shaking his head like there's no way that Sam could ever understand.

And then Sam says it, what he's been trying not to say, what he's been trying not to even _think. _"You might be dying, now. Now that he's dead. You might be dying."

"I'm not dying."

"How do you know?"

"I don't know. I just know."

"That's not good enough, Dean," Sam says, trying to sound reasonable.

"Maybe not. But this shit?" Dean gestures at the dune. Towards their one-room shack. "I might as well be dead_._"

"We can go somewhere else, Dean. We can go wherever the fuck you want, but how the hell are we gonna hunt, Dean? How?"

"The same way we always did."

Sam holds back his sigh. He doesn't want to be condescending. He really doesn't.

Dean stands up, chest out, chin tilted upward. The weariness—the resignation—falls off his face and is replaced with something new. Something cocky. Something that's been missing for a long time.

And then, faster than Sam's brain can process, Dean's just gone, running down the beach with all his old speed.

Sam bolts after him, and he expects to overtake Dean in a matter of seconds but it's not long before he realizes he's not catching up. Ahead of him Dean is getting smaller and smaller, disappearing into the night. There's no moon tonight, no nothing and for a minute Sam loses sight of his brother and the sand is mucky and he's still only wearing one shoe but he picks up speed because suddenly he's running nowhere towards nothing alone in the dark.

Dean stops very suddenly, pitching forward just short of the waterline. The tide is out, waves dancing so far away that the sound of them crashing is muted like an old recording.

Sam lands on his knees behind his crouched brother. Dean's gasping wet, asthmatic gasps, eyes open and blank. He can't pull in enough air.

_Maybe this is it, _Sam catches himself thinking.

But after a minute Dean coughs himself out and struggles up out of the sand, jeans dark with water. He draws up to his full height. He stands steady. And he waits.

And then Sam understands what his brother is trying to say.

"Okay," Sam says breathlessly, and he can't keep a smile off his face. "The mystery of the disappearing research hospital. Let's go. Let's do it."

"Sam I'm sorry. I know you deserve—"

"—I do not. I do _not _deserve more," Sam says, and for the first time in his life, he means it. "I don't want more."

Because what the Lord giveth the Lord taketh away and when a door shuts a window opens and tomorrow is another day and all's well that ends well and all that other horseshit_._

He'll live.

Dean will live.

They'll live.

:::

THE END.

So... please don't kill me for leaving it so wide open for a sequel. This was originally going to be one big long monstrous fic but... no. Noooo!

**ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS **

Thank you to **Chiiyo86 **for being awesome. Thank you to **PADavis** for welcoming me so lovingly into the fandom. Thank you to **JuliaAurelia** for pointing out some things about this fic that I would have otherwise ignored. Thank you to fandom goddess **roque clasique** for reccing this fic and sending like, a _ridiculous _number of hits my way. Thank you **JustMe **for making me smile (and making me crazy!) with your anonymous comments (you seemed really agitated by the last couple of chapters, by the way--my deepest apologies). **And most of all thank you to everyone who took the time to review and comment. Thank you for making my first experience in this fandom so awesome. **I know I sucked bad at replying to reviews but trust me, in my head I wrote epic love letters to each and every one of you.** LUVS LUVS LUVS**

And, finally, now that we're all done here, I must appeal to all you lurkers out there: I used to be a lurker myself, so I understand that reviewing can be a pain in the ass. But please consider speaking up. Just this once. Throw this chick a bone, how bout it?

And if not, well— you know I love you anyway, baby. :D


End file.
